


Leather & Lace: Ride or Rule

by onceuponatimetime



Series: Leather & Lace [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bikers, Biker AU, Biker Emma Swan, Biker Gangs, F/F, F/M, Lesbian Sex, Motorcycles, Multi, POV Alternating, Regal Believer, Stockholm Syndrome, Swan Queen - Freeform, Tattooed Emma Swan, Tattoos, swanqueen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-10 20:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7860562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponatimetime/pseuds/onceuponatimetime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gruff biker Emma Swan and her outlaw motorcycle club clash with officious mayor Regina Mills when they move their base of operations to Storybrooke, insinuate themselves into local town life, and run afoul of rival biker gangs. Can love bridge the gap between Emma & Regina's different worlds and protect their families from deadly gang wars? AU slowburn Swan Queen Biker Club Romance</p><p><strong>They call her "Savior" but she's all about the most sinful ways to get things done.</strong> Fiercely loyal Emma "Savior" Swan doesn't give a damn if anyone disagrees with the way she and her Charming Knights MC brothers ride down the road of life - uppity (and alluringly sexy) mayor be damned.</p><p><strong>They call her "Madame Mayor" but she'll do whatever it takes to protect her family and her town.</strong> The unassailable Regina Mills will stop at nothing to ensure her town runs smoothly for her constituents and remains a safe place to raise her darling young son - imbecilic (and ruggedly sexy) biker chick be damned.</p><p>When a new threat presents a common problem for both women, coming together must mean more than satiating their desire for each other if both their families are to survive the crucible of gang warfare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Meeting The Mayor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _**A/N:** This story is told through alternating POVs between Emma and Regina. It contains mature language  & depictions of violence, sex, drug use, and alcohol consumption. This fanfic is meant for entertainment purposes only and is not a true depiction of motorcycle club life, gun culture, small town politics, police and law institutions, or crime syndicates. I anticipate this story being at least 10 chapters and becoming Part 1 of a Leather & Lace AU SQ biker series. It's slowburn SQ and some characters are OOC. As the story progresses, there may be character deaths. End of the Prologue contains a list of "biker" slang definitions used in the chapter/greater story._
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> Emma and her motorcycle club settle into Storybrooke, but Emma immediately bumps heads with its mayor Regina Mills. Well, that tends to happen when you barge into someone's office and eye-bang the hell out of her. Can Emma force Regina to see things her way? And if Emma can put Regina on the same page as her, is that something she'll actually enjoy doing?

_**EMMA SWAN** _

I slammed my brass-knuckled fist on her desk and said, "Are you the stupid twit who vetoed my shit?"

It was my opening salvo, really, so I shouted those fucking words at her. This bitchy brunette mayor of a podunk town with the wonkiest internet connection in all of Maine called Storybrooke that August "Puppet Boy" Booth and Lance "Lancelot" Washington dragged our motorcycle club, Charming Knights, from Boston in the middle of the hottest July heatwave ever recorded, just so we could set up shop for a spell.

How long was a spell?

Hell if I knew.

At eight in the morning on a Monday, I was too preoccupied with battling the tit-twisting aftermath of a weekend spent exposing every inch of my body to the wonderful W3 - _whiskey, weed & women_ \- when we discussed today's duties at our makeshift clubhouse, this sweet ass huge cabin situated on the forest edge outlining this weird ass small town. There was no way I could've devoted one ounce of attention to our Vice President Puppet Boy's musings about our stop-over's timetable when a fucking freight train was delivering containers of stabbing pain to my brain with no scheduled stops in between.

If extrapolated from past excursions, I had _years_ of blasting into this irksome mayor's office ahead of me.

Let's see, we were in Boston for five years, Tallahassee for three before MA, and Rayleigh for three before FL. We're the most nomadic motorcycle club on the East Coast, we have a patched-in lady rider, that hardcore bitch is me, and I don't give a damn if anyone disapproves of anything we do.

Neither do my Charming Knights brothers.

We're a brotherhood with one sister thrown in the mix - unfailingly loyal to each other to our very cores - and we fucking love it that way. We're outlaws who drop heat when necessary but don't have a death wish mandate to hold any territory. We defend turf _if_ we want to keep it.

Don't want to keep it? We ride the hell out to bigger and better pastures. That's why I love my MC.

We were always on the go eating pavement on customized bikes like chromosexual mavericks with our hair kissing the wind from underneath brain buckets and loose-leg ladies happily riding backwarmer.

I'd ride the horizon forever if I could.

Did it all the time in my mind.

Some people call it running.

Charming Knights call it _living_.

And it's the fucking _best_ life. I ought to know. I had the fucking _worst_ life as an orphan lost to nightmare foster homes, shady juvie centers and drugged-out grifter gangs before Puppet Boy bumped into me and offered family life and life purpose with Charming Knights. Like a true sister, I rode out diligently to wherever my family wanted to ride.

Hence, Storybrooke.

At our final club meeting in Boston, Puppet Boy animated some big spiel about how we'd snag a golden nest egg in Storybrooke. Like this rinky-dink little town with no strip club in sight is somehow a veritable goldmine hidden from the rest of the world where our MC, at the snap of our fingers, will drop some serious retirement cake into our coffers.

As they say, I had to see it to believe it and, until I walked into this fucking brunette's office, I was hardly one step into the land of impressed.

I understood my MC's Sergeant-At-Arms Lancelot's quixotic motivations for our cross state trekking. He wanted his old lady Guinevere and their unborn child as far away from any scene involving her shithead ex-boyfriend Arthur and his fucktard Round Table Knights MC. We went to war with those RTK fuckers in MA and won. Residual animosities will always exist, especially after we made off with their hardbody babes all Helen of Troy style and they're self-destructive enough to wage war against us ad nauseum.

But the true reason we left Boston had more to do with serious money depletion rather than our pussy pillaging tendencies.

Puppet Boy's been to Storybrooke before and scoped out its potential. He knows a road warrior's widow once affiliated with his estranged father's MC, Portal Hopperz, who owns a diner in the heart of town and lives in a B&B with her young and sexy granddaughter. Long story short, aforementioned young and sexy road warrior progeny has Puppet Boy's big and little heads trapped between her lanky legs, and her even looser northern lips gave him the lowdown on the wealth of the town.

So yeah, both gents had pussy on their pituitary glands but also embraced the allure of easy going wallet stuffing when they considered Storybrooke. Their ranked positions bestowed them instant clout during Church in our clubhouse's chapel where we discussed this important move, and our collective disillusionment with Boston led to a majority vote to ride into Storybrooke.

Seven days after that seminal vote, I blew fist-first into this uppity mayor's office.

If you ask me, small towns equal big problems. But you can't tell our wooden-headed club VP anything once he has chowder fed tits-and-ass embossed on his brain. When he falls hard for a girl, it's dick first but generally genuine.

To his credit, this seaside snorefest of a town must be teaming with priceless princess pussy if this olive-toned sun-kissed brunette sitting before me - a Visconti Alchemy fountain pen in her hand stilled mid-scribble over a document on her marble desk, her mouth tightly pursed and her head menacingly tilted, like she and the pen were preserved in amber - was any true indication.

Gods, I hope so. I haven't burned up some bed sheets with worthy pussy in an embarrassingly long time.

Sure, I always bagged primo T&A when carousing with my best wingman, the smooth talking shitmeister Killian Jones. I call him "Kill" because he has a certain way of getting rid of club problems. He's a livewire, really, so only idiots cross him; even if it takes him a lifetime, he will settle a grudge _permanently_. (A man cultivated that degree of determination when the first account he had to settle permanently was a drunkard stepfather who practiced bare knuckle boxing on his step-kid's faces.) Kill queued up hot chicks outside his door more frequently than he did enemies, which is on the order of _whenever he's fucking breathing_ , because the damn dude's a blue-eyed roguish Don Juan Lothario doused in serious metrosexual vibes. We don't call him the "Panty Pirate" for nothing, although he prefers "Hook" because he "hooks up with pussy nonstop."

Kill and I tag-teamed a pretty enough leggy brunette before our Boston exodus - a rare playtime thing because I'm really not one for dude-dicks in my face and never one for that shit in my body. Kill and I just get down like that, totally hands off each other, once in a blue moon to shake up the monotony and give a lucky chick the thrill of a lifetime. And that lucky leggy chick ended up preferring my lady-on-lady mojo to Kill's pound-town offerings by a landslide, coming back to visit my bed every night for two weeks.

I'm never hard up for cunt, but I'm also not a total cunt. That fourteenth day I finally got shot of the little brunette by explaining the score: I don't make love to hit-n-quits and I don't date anybody period.

Giving another woman earth-shattering orgasms is a golden gig for me. I honestly enjoy making chicks cum over and over again - absolutely fucking love making them pant & moan until they scream my name - even if I don't get my rocks off in the process. But a woman catching feelings for me is her golden ticket to the outside of our clubhouse's front door. I wanted to be locked down by a relationship like I wanted assholes for eyes.

All things considered, that chick was a big inflate to my sex game ego. Couldn't help but puff my tits out in self-congratulatory praise. But I've been living through a dry-spell when it comes to digging into a woman with brains bigger than her breasts and aspirations larger than her ass.

A woman who was a _bad bitch_.

When I took Storybrooke's Town Hall steps two at a time and blasted into this prissy mayor's eminent domain, I was hyper-aware that I just barged into Queen Cleopatra's audience chamber like a Roman general out to conquer more than the lands of Egypt. Before the bitchy brunette morphed her seriously suckable burgundy lips into a shape words could escape and after she arched an arrogant eyebrow sharper than a sword at me, I knew she was the epitome of shit you did not pursue unless you rocked an iron-clad exit strategy or a heavily armed armada.

I knew she was a bad bitch of the highest order.

Which meant she was absolutely fucking _perfect_ for me.

Which meant I would absolutely fucking _fuck up_ my callout mission to bend her to my MC's will.

Unsurprisingly, my brothers had that same premonition about me meeting the mayor but experienced it sight unseen before I raided her office.

Before heading out to Storybrooke's Town Hall, I collected my road dogs from one of our rec rooms: our Road Captain Kill and our newly patched-in brother, the freshly delivered from a six month stint in jail, Will "The Knave" Scarlet. Of course, with my life being what it was - a series of chaotic complications sprinkled with tiny moments of slightly milder disorder - I couldn't just go on this run without being bombarded by their sermons. My brothers were overprotective of me but did so in a way that only goofy-ass idiot older brothers mustered, which is to say they were huge dicks about it.

As I traipsed through a sea of crushed beer cans, half-eaten food, and soon-to-be smoked bowls of weed, Leroy "Grumpy" Minor, our five foot short club Secretary, wrapped one of his meaty hands around my arm and blustered, "For fuck's sake, sister. Before you break that mayor's fingers off in your hungry cunt, get her Johnny Hancock on our papers."

Can't blame Grumpy for the permanent wintry disposition. His ex-baggage Astrid slapped him with child support payments bigger than his fathead and hardly ever allows him to visit his two boys, Short Stack and Mini Me - six and seven year olds who are just as short as their nicknames suggest but cuter than Grumpy's genes should've had any ability to bequeath them. Bitch had the impertinence to say our lifestyle wasn't conducive to Grumpy's children's happiness even though his earnings create that happiness and she's shacked up with a useless unemployed biker from the equally useless Dusterz MC.

As much as I miss Grumpy's two little dirt devils going on special "runs" with me to "steal" the cookies and cupcakes I would secretly purchase for them and hide around our clubhouse, I'm never signing myself up for baby mama drama. Babies and little kids are great. But they're also tethers to people who will hand you all the reasons in the universe to want them permanently removed from your (and your kid's) life. Good thing I don't rock spermy balls or give a damn about any chick enough to talk sperm donors with her.

Speaking of sperm donors, in true Panty Pirate fashion, as Kill gallivanted past me laughing at Grumpy's sage advice while sheathing his custom-made rapier into a weathered scabbard on his black leather belt, he couldn't resist adding his two doubloons to the lecture, "If I were you, love, I'd tape those papers to my ass and make her sign them with her fucking tongue."

Lancelot, the stoic one of our bunch - he's a broody presence due to serving two military tours in Afghanistan - chimed in with his big brother orders as he lifted a paintbrush smothered in blue goo to the wooden crib he built for his upcoming bundle of joy & tears, "Ignore that Pirates of the Caribbean looking motherfucker. Don't make me have to pull you from a _shitastrophe_. That means no five finger discounting. No pussy diving. And especially no Hulk Outs. Just go in and say: sign these for me, Mrs. Mayor. Then go get yourself a big lunch at that diner Puppet Boy hits up everyday. Got it?"

"Gonna be real good, daddy," I joked. I loved messing with Mr. Moody, and was suddenly selfishly thankful his paint job wasn't going to win him any favors from Guinevere. He was turning his kid's crib into a lamentable rendition of a Smurf village massacre. It would take me several hours to go behind his back, strip that shit off, and repaint it to showroom perfection. But, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'm the kid's godparent so he or she will have the best of everything, even if I have to chop off Lancelot's hands to provide it.

"Take this shit real serious before I give you real serious shit to take," Lancelot replied, still laying his point and his paint on too thick.

I cringed. It was either do that or laugh at him, and no one laughed at Lancelot. Dude's got the sense of humor of a dead man and the strength of, well, a reanimated dead man named Frankenstein; only Guinevere was gifted with his smiles. Never heard him chuckle. He's Martin Luther King Jr until you give him a reason to become Malcolm X. Making fun of him, yeah, never.

Still, I found Lancelot's words of wisdom highly hypocritical given how he scored his old lady and given how many times I've saved his ass from the business end of a knife because he snapped over someone, especially that shit-eating Arthur, edging near his wife. Outside of his Charming Riders branded tats on his forearm and back, Lancelot only rocks one other piece of ink: Guinevere's name wrapped around a sword. Needless to say, dude was obsessed. Love turned our club's best warrior into a squishy-wishy motherfucker who gave me advice he couldn't even follow himself.

Being my club's only female rider, I never let my brothers ribbing me go uncontested lest they grow into truly misogynistic pricks.

"Yo, assholes," I said evenly. All three men turned their attentions to me with chin jerks in my direction. I flexed my hands in a dramatic fashion like a puppeteer, "My magic digits and motorboat tongue will get this mayor so lit, she'll do _anything_ and _everything_ for me."

Kill chucked, Lancelot leveled exasperated eyes my way, and Grumpy, well that grim bastard snorted.

"You mofos think I'm bullshitting? I stole Kill's bed bunny right from under his spent dick and tapped her cunt so hard she made me chocolate pancakes _butt ass naked_ everyday for two weeks."

"So, love, you're saying that you support sexual enslavement?" Kill quipped like the jackass he often was.

Lancelot's eyes went predator dark at Kill. I had to suppress the urge to knee Kill in the balls before ushering his dumb ass off to safety by spinning him toward the door instead. I'm not what you'd call a pillar of humanity by even the loosest sense of the concept, but I don't tolerate anyone turning chicks out and neither does my club. That bastard Kill knows Guinevere's history but he can't hold his tongue to save his life. I said he was often a jackass, did I not?

"I'm saying it takes a woman to know a woman, Captain Moron, and you wannabes don't have big enough clits for the job. I'll give this mayor such good citizen, she'll think I'm hitting the streets canvassing for her ass. On that note, _fuck you all_. Kill, mount your pretty face up while I grab Free Willy. We ride out in five."

It's a full-time job putting my brothers in their places. Grumpy's a boozy avuncular jerk, Lancelot's a cock-blocking killjoy, and Kill's always a willing heckler. But they knew their pep talks. Gotta be crude, rude and in the mood to succeed. Life will test you. Always.

That sentiment applied doubly when you're a woman. Shit's way worse for us. Biker or not.

With my luck, which is the worst luck fathomable, that shit'd go triple for me.

**

[SQ biker SQ] [SQ biker SQ]

**

So, this morning on the way to the mayor's, with the hot wind blowing my hair dry and my two road dogs rolling toward Main Street in a beeline behind me on their big body Harleys, I expunged the extraneous thoughts rattling around my head, including musings on the need for restful sleep, and settled on righteous fury as my only train of contemplation.

What I needed was a dossier filled with specifics about which of the mayor's buttons to press and all the other pockets to line with "hello" money so things got churning smoothly in Storybrooke. What I had was jack shit; the only intel I rolled with was the knowledge that the mayor refused our initial offer. I mean, fucking duh.

Turns out Puppet Boy spent most of his recon duty stuffing his face with large plates of good food and stuffing his dick between a large pair of pert boobs. Love the fucker, but sometimes he's the wrong guy to send solo into a new town, club VP or not.

I should've sifted out details on my own by performing some kiss & tell sessions with the chattiest most slutty local bed bunnies or by outright stalking this mayoral bitch for a few days. But I was already duck-walking my bike, _Bumblebee_ , into a parking spot outside Storybrooke's Town Hall, a building that screamed well-placed money, regal authority and spinster chick aesthetics all in one go.

Spoiled spilled milk, too late to cry.

Divesting myself of my gloves and brain bucket, while Kill and Will posted up their bikes, I gripped the mindset needed to properly score into the town's resident ruler so she'd rip apart easy-peasy like a perforated sheet of paper.

Blasted right the fuck into her office unannounced and called her ass a twit.

But this prickly brunette wouldn't just roll over and take it doggystyle like a horny biker groupie ...

"How did you get into my office?" She spat. Her beautiful chocolate eyes met my greens with controlled fury; some sort of defense mechanism that wasn't working for her. Even under her mascaraed scrutiny, it was easy to decipher from the sinfully seductive octaves of her tight gravelly voice that she was angrier than a rabid dog with lit firecrackers shoved up its ass. No surprise she was the kind of bossy bitch accustomed to having her questions answered immediately.

And no surprise the combo of her velvety voice dripping with angry sex vibes and her raised brow promising wicked punishments made my breath hitch mid-throat.

_Umpf!_

I rolled my shoulders forward to drive out burning breaths, and gulped in a fresh gust of air. Remained tight-lipped because I wanted to fuck with her mood and cool my head the fuck down.

I tossed the brunette a smug smile.

Her upper lip ticced wildly. "And who do you think you are to use that tone of voice with _me_?" She gritted, dropping her pen to her desk like an atomic bomb. Her kohl-lined reddening browns burrowed a hole through my forehead.

Fuck this mayor was something else. Her features were all soft angles around her full cheekbones and soulful eyes, but that's where that warm & fuzzy shit ended. Everywhere else on her ticked off face from her unwavering jawline to a bulging fault line forehead vein were junkyard-metal hard and cold. All that shit added up to being a gorgeous aphrodisiac.

Excuse me for typecasting, but I'm an unrepentant lezzie who prefers my bad bitches to be like my motorcycles: _powerful as fuck_.

This HBIC checked all my "like" boxes with big, bold, heavy-handed strokes.

Definitely could've used backup inside her office. Either Kill or Will, whichever of the pair was in the mood to be the most reckless so he could thrash about her office breaking shit to intimidate her and also have charged-up enough guts to keep my libido in chains by slapping the back of my head the nanosecond my tongue jutted out the side of my mouth at the sight and sound of her moxy.

But both lieutenants were posted in front of her building as sentries. That was their assigned duty.

 _Fuckit_.

I'd dropped words on her chin that let her know she's dealing with a boss rider. "I strolled right past a snoring redhead whose narcoleptic oversight augured badly for her prospects of remaining gainfully employed as your minimum wage earning secretary," I teased, noting with an arrogant wink how this dark-haired beauty was well aware of my twinkling greens memorizing every inch of her statuesque face.

The woman didn't hide the fact that she was affected by my ability to string together more than one word. (I'm a biker not an idiot. Even us dropout riders have read a book or two. In my case, more than a book or two.) The brunette straightened her posture with a noticeably restrained flair and rocked a suddenly stunned expression - for the briefest of moments - before it was abandoned for measured mirth. She hadn't drank all of me in with her judgmental browns even though her mouth quaked with the beginnings of a titter.

Dammit if I wasn't looking forward to the returned favor like a fat kid waiting for someone to slice a birthday cake. "As for my tone, lady, it's my natural speaking voice when I'm something in the vicinity of livid."

"Why do I even bother with you people?" She harped, agitated brown eyes pinning me to her office door.

"Oh, you'll do more than bother with my people if-"

"Don't talk," she interrupted, jutting a finger in the air to enumerate her point. "Not now and..." she added, wrenching her eyes tightly shut. "Preferably not ever."

_What the actual hell?_

I had to ease my fist from her desk. Just soak this bitch on in full force. At first I thought she was not verbally sparring with me because she finally did drink me all in and was laying down some mild law before we started throwing bows at each other. I mean, I looked completely badass. Before thundering into her office with fire churning in my gut, I armored up in my knock-you-the-fuck-out biker chick regalia:

A tight white Marvel's Black Widow tank top, even tighter black jeans, red leather wrist straps, some take-no-prisoners black motorcycle boots, my black & dark red Charming Knights leather cut emblazoned with our colors (two swords crossed in front of a broken heart shaped shield with a Pegasus, wings spread wide and proud, perched behind the shield), an over the shoulder holster for my iron (a M1911 pistol), my workman black leather belt with a sheath for my blade (one of my babies: an eight inch Smith & Wesson Special Ops M9 bayonet), silver & blacks skull rings on my right hand, and on my left hand my lucky brass knuckles the mayor was already acquainted with. Well, her desk, anyway.

I discovered that she hadn't peeped the full me - or didn't give a damn if she had - when she pinched the bridge of her nose. You don't do that shit when you're in a heated kerfuffle that can quickly escalate or when you're intimidated by someone.

"By the gods," she added in a huff of annoyance, most likely directed at both the pain in her face and the pest in her office.

Real talk: that migraine shit would annoy me too. So would being surrounded by incompetence. While the fleeting thought of sending flowers to her secretary for continuing to do me the solid of keeping her ass in dreamland crossed my mind, I chuckled inwardly thinking about how she'd probably be unemployed within the hour. It would be the right move to fire the redhead after letting someone like me waltz into her office in exchange for some quick zzz's.

One of my MC brothers half-stepped on an all important mission, then you place all your money on his ass being strung upside until he passed out. Our club President David "Prince Charming" Nolan would revoke his patches in a heartbeat. Hell, he'd sword tip-pry them clean off the slacker's cut and burn 'em in a bucket right in front of the guy. Prince Charming, well, he's a sweet and loving man until he's not. Once he's armored up and mounted on his high horse, there's no bringing him down unless your name is Mary Margaret, his old lady, who we all affectionately call Snow.

Being the only woman rider of the club has a perk: I easily notice Snow's influence all around our clubhouses, both on the walls and on the members. My brothers take Prince Charming's cue and actively seek Snow's opinion on the shit bogging down their hearts or their minds, which skirts into the club's business side of things more often than they'd ever admit. They defer to her for so much positive support, she ought to charge them by the millisecond and call her racket The Hope Fundraiser.

In her mid-thirties, the petite brunette was the glue that keeps us together, defusing heated situations that cropped up around our clubhouse and gaining Prince Charming's ear when things outside of it went nuclear. The woman was born into the rider life; she knew not take shit from her man but also how to give it to him without lobbing off his balls (Prince Charming's patches and tats prove he's our leader but Snow's respect for him proves he's the man to lead us). All said and done, she's the perfect old lady.

So yeah, Snow's the person who planted the idea in Prince Charming's mind - likely while planting a kiss on his dick - of me being the member to sic on mayor duty. And Prince Charming being _pussy-whipped_ in a good way - Snow and our club President were made for each other like they shared one big ol' sappy heart - forced Puppet Boy to run it by me because Puppet Boy's a natural born storyteller. He could weave his grand tales into my ears, even if I didn't believe half of his shit or listen to the full gist - I owed him that much.

And, I owed Snow. She treated me like a daughter before the Charming Knights welcomed me as a sister. I've never been especially close to other women. I never knew my mother, had no sisters or female cousins due to being an orphan, grew up with chicks who had no involvement with me unless they wanted taboo orgasms, and I didn't care enough about the hit-n-quits I fucked to bother with knowing them at all. Life had made me her bitch and I wanted nothing more than to revenge fuck her right in the ass. I was astonishingly soulless. Full of darkness. Caring for nothing but the open road, my next meal, another joint hit, and the easiest lays.

Snow broke into a real fucked up Fort Knox to reach me. Told me her man's MC was a home, not a cage. I knew jack shit about having a home, everything about living in cages, so I took a chance on her brand of hope and the Charming Knights way of life.

Snow is the only woman I trust. So, naturally, part of me suspects Snow already saw the mayor around town and this callout duty was her way of pushing me toward something she felt I needed. She abhors me having a revolving bedroom door and a closed heart because she believes in that bucket of bull about true love and soulmates. The infuriatingly upbeat woman often chastised me with the same probing question over cold beers: "When will you believe that you deserve more outta life?"

We both knew callout duties from Prince Charming couldn't be refused.

In Charming Knights, your duties were top priorities because they sustained and protected the lives of everyone in our club and our families. You wear our cut, you do your job. A principle I believe this mayor could easily identify with regarding her own staff, which is why I couldn't allow her offense against my MC to blow by unanswered.

I'm in this prim and proper magistrate's office to do my Charming Knights duty.

Bored and hungover as I was this morning, I was also here because I _so_ dig a challenge.

I loudly cleared my throat. "You know, I hear they've developed a combo medicine to deal with tension blowback. It's called Tylenol and _sex_ ," I quipped nastily.

That snapped her eyes to attention.

"With my secretary currently indisposed, you will not encounter any difficulty leaving the same way you _strolled_ in," she bit out, voice stonier than a gargoyle statue. "Therefore," she added with an exaggerated flourish of her wrist angled toward her office door, "you can do it _now_."

The harsh bright light from the merciless sun streaming into her office through expansive windows - framed by elegant black & white curtains I'd kill to have drawn closed to soften the lighting in the air-conned room - haloed her lissome shoulders from behind and morphed her into something approaching an avenging angel.

I was surprised she didn't attempt to fling me out her office or battle-ram past me to claw at her secretary's assed-out face. Then again, not really. She undoubtedly had more staff on deck she could siren call to do her dirty work. Bourgeois twats like her always did.

That I was even highlighting those scenarios meant I was losing my touch. Or rather, was not losing my desire to touch _her_. I imagined Prince Charming leaning against his Harley, with a half-spent cigarette dangling from his mouth, chuckling and taunting, _"You can't handle some mean pussy when you got the meanest one between your legs?"_

Off the mayor's look of irritated menace, I sighed and crossed my arms at my chest. I could grow roots like a tree. I was that degree of unmovable.

Then she did some truly evil bitch shit that I lacked any and all ability to defend against.

Her coffee irises slowly dragged themselves from the bird motif tats lining the right column of my neck to my black Charming Knights ink on my right forearm until they landed squarely on the patches of my cut that announced my road nic _Savior_ and my rank _Enforcer_ and then -

_HOLY FUCK!_

She slid her sweet pink _long_ tongue across the quivering flesh of her bottom lip, moistening it to a brilliant shine, as her eyes fluttered shut and she _mewled_.

Actually fucking _mewled_.

My vagina didn't know me anymore.

My mouth went dry as the Sahara Desert as every single drop of fluid in my body receded south, transforming my folds into Niagara _Fucking_ Falls.

My mind conjured the image of her tongue doing that sexy-as-fuck stunt _anywhere_ and _everywhere_ on my body, and my clit saluted _hard_ , shooting electrified tingling sensations straight to my core like an eel. My nub defected to this gorgeous mayor's side of the battlefield like the traitorous little shit that it was.

I scowled wide to counter her look of smug satisfaction.

Wanting to recoup at least a modicum of my badassery - my core had clenched so abnormally tight, almost to the point of sucking my jeans into a vortex of lust, I looked like a premature ejaculator about to blow his wad - I scraped my brass knuckles across an area of her desk that housed a Jenga-stacked mound of papers just begging for a tip-over nudge.

As my fingers skittered along the fattest edge of the stack, my naturally curious eyes quickly took in the decor of the wall closest to us. The fancy silver framed awards, certificates and diplomas lining her immaculate office's wall told her story: she's a Harvard and Yale educated piece of work, co-founder of Regal Bank of Storybrooke, and owner of an internationally top-rated equestrian facility called Enchanted Forest Farm who went by the name Regina Mills.

She was fan- _fucking_ -tastic. I hadn't even touched this mayor and she already ruined me for every other woman on the planet.

There were a million reasons why I shouldn't spread her eagle and fuck her senseless against her desk - a very important one brought me here this morning - and yet one glorious reason why I should claim her with my teeth and my tongue: smart pussy was the _best_ pussy.

I was doomed.

Just completely and utterly fucked.

**

[SQ biker SQ] [SQ biker SQ]

**

When the tetchy mayor finally flung open her eyes, a devilish arch swept over her brow.

She sighed out a smirk.

In the oddly bearable silence that was anything but companionable, I grew more fuckstrucked by the second and she _knew_ it.

She could see the darkening lust stealing the green from my eyes. And, shit, I still couldn't focus on my callout duty because my body decided my life's work was to keep studying this bad bitch's lips.

That top lip of hers had an achingly sexy scar - delicate like a lone eyelash yet something tough like a tat - and it jerked a few times, teasing the emergence of another smirk, or _gods help me_ , the return of her pornstar lip-licking antics that would hit me clean and hard in my clit for a second time.

_Gods, I'd give away my best bayonet for her to mewl again._

I had to ixnay the warmth skating down my spine. "Answer my goddamn question, _woman_ ," I ordered.

And that did it for her sexcapade migraine, apparently.

She shot up from her profanely large black leather chair, scooting it back toward those huge windows with a forceful leg bump and served up a scowl that could lacerate the most leathery of faces. Call it my big girl's intuition, but I'd bet both my tits this indomitable mayor has a fast & mean right hook in her.

"I'll do one better and call security," she spat, a long manicured ringed finger hitting the intercom button and receiving no response. She played off her disappointment with a little beaut delivered under measured tightness, "He'll more than graciously answer your asinine question on the way back to that _earsore_ I suggest you hop on and ride straight out of Storybrooke."

Insult me?

Cool. I can take it. I like vajayjay, ride a crotch rocket, and hang out with lawless men twenty-four seven. Not like I haven't heard everything from the Big Book of Stuck-up Bitches Insults.

Insult my 2015 yellow & black Ultra Limited & Low Harley?

You wake the goddamn beast.

I've been riding motorized wheels since I was seven. From dirt bikes to ATVs until I hit the pavement with my first secondhand Harley at sixteen. Riding is more pleasurable to me than eating the sweetest bear claw and eating out the wettest pussy - and I fucking _love_ doing both those things more than I do breathing clean air.

Like my brothers and my wits, I trust Bumblebee with my life. She's sacrosanct.

"What the hell do you know about _riding_ anything, Regina Mills?"

Eh, it's usually an overtly sexual beast that wakes the hell up. Look, I'm not blind. This dusky brunette headcase encased in a form-fitting black pantsuit - its white oxford blouse swaddling her generous decolletage so tightly her chest resembled an overstuffed burrito - had voluptuous curves. Oh so many _touchable_ curves - from the perfect globes of her breasts to the rising swell of her hips that my hands and lips were jealous only my eyes had explored thus far. Her entire body was primed to trap a motherfucker in an infinite loop of pleasure, and hell, I wanted her with an intensity I've never thought possible. Not just body, but _soul_.

Riled up as she got me just looking at her - and dammit if I wasn't bordering on licentious - I did not give one actual fuck to the wind if she summoned a battalion of toy cops to her rescue.

The way I see it: just more ass for me to kick.

And from what I'll wager is an overly ample derriere on her … after what she did to us … forget _kicking_ hers.

My blood burned Mt. Vesuvius lava hot. I wanted to see her literal naked ass draped over her desk, bouncing pinked and swollen, taking whack after whack from my brassed-up hands like a naughty girl with an even naughtier safe word. Record that hotness on a burner phone like I'm plotting to pull a sex tape leak scandal on her mayoral reputation.

When the brunette opened her mouth to speak, yanking me back to the reality of the obnoxious black and white palette of her office's interior design, I mentally kicked myself for forgetting to rock a red bandana that could've easily doubled as a mouth gag.

"While it's certainly an accomplishment you remained in school long enough to learn to read information framed on walls, it's _Madame Mayor_ to you," she corrected pointedly, her eyes rolling faster than my bike's wheels when they finally hit an open stretch of highway. "There's another tidbit you could stand to learn," she kept at me, her tone growing menacingly jovial. "It concerns a different, less touristy ride my upstanding town can offer a person of your caliber. Care for a quick lesson?"

I shouldn't have considered the thought of dominating her on her home turf because - _of course_ \- she'd gather confidence and strength from a familiar setting.

But I _itched_ to punish her. I _had_ to scratch that itch.

She threw a shit-covered monkey wrench into my MC's plans to introduce ourselves to her town, take over The Rabbit Hole, Marine Garage and possibly some pawnbroker's spot, plus collect money for an altruistic cause.

Seriously, what kinda person doesn't like a carnival boasting fast rides, fun prizes, and gooey funnel cakes when the proceeds benefit her town's public elementary school?

A twit like this mayor. That's the fuck who.

Sure, we get a liquor license and some other shit in the deal. Last time I checked, that's called a win-win. My club could easily steal the shit we need or want, but we're on this kick to become one hundred percent legit, _eventually_.

Fostering goodwill helps the townspeople look away from the shadier things we must do to get out of the criminal life. The key is her signature; with the mayor on board, _on paper_ , we're practically set with carving out room to maneuver and eventually take over Storybrooke.

I was _all in_ with that endgame. Just needed to suss out a fuller picture of her. "Yeah, let's say you _try_ to teach me that factoid," I challenged. "But we take it slow so I can luxuriate in that shit."

"Delighted to oblige," she hummed, moving a bit away from her desk. "It's been said that riding handcuffed in the backseat of a partitioned cop car then being unceremoniously tossed into a hot jail cell is a truly engaging experience. If you remain in my office for this next call, you'll be able to confirm the validity of that assertion firsthand. Of course, that is assuming you haven't already had the pleasure of accumulating a wealth of such encounters," she stated, her black Louboutin heels not worrying her feet at all as we continued to stand, sizing each other up like venerable fighters at a title bout match weigh-in conference.

"Call 'em, lady. Can't wait to greet 'em," I said, hands still crossed at my chest but much looser.

Yeah, I'm one hundred percent certain her boys in blue won't overwhelm my brothers downstairs. I doubt this town has more than a handful of lawfucks, and Kill can take down at least two on his own with his swashbuckling blade and pistol skills. Will's a wildcard because he likes to talk shit first, but he's a proper thief - so he's fast - and an even better dirty tactics brawler. Most people fail to watch both sets of his limbs to their own detriment.

"Are you mentally incapacitated?" She hissed, still standing at attention and still doing it pissed. "This is not an idle threat. It's a _concrete promise_."

She dipped her body an inch closer into my territory, bracing her lower thighs against her desk's edge. I was too busy goading her anger earlier - and trailing lusty eyes over her supple curves - to have fully noticed that she was likely a good foot shorter than me, give or take a few inches, out of heels. It was a sudden realization that made me ache to scoop her into my arms and mark her neck with dark-as-fuck bites announcing - for all of Storybrooke to see - that she belong to _me_.

And _only_ to me.

I'm woefully a sucker for _petite_ powerful women.

If this mayor had more than my twenty-eight years under her belt, say in the area of thirty-three, then I'm hitting my dream woman trifecta. Natural outlaw inclination to claim her or not, I kept myself detached.

"That's the type of promise I hope you're capable of fulfilling," I flicked at her.

"Do not make the mistake of underestimating me, dear," she said with a devilish glint in her russet orbs. She damn near made my red cotton panties _dissolve_ when her throaty voice sailed across her desk and docked deep within my core the instant she languidly rasped, "You have no idea what I'm capable of."

Under duress from the pinching sensation emanating from my throbbing core, I took a deep breath that I loathed she actually witnessed. It'd be easy for her to misconstrue my heated desire with my succumbing to her grit. Or maybe I was simply mad that both were true. The bitch had the temerity to quirk an eyebrow and lift the corners of her lips at me.

Look, I don't believe in love at first sight. That BS was manufactured by chick flicks and fairy tales. But, I knew the twisting sensation in my gut was something more than lust at first sight. She was making me consider shit I hadn't before. Really _think_ about how I needed to handle things. But, yeah, my mouth wasn't emailed that memo.

"And you have no idea how much I love surprises," I quipped, "It's a shame you don't strike me as being the same way. I could show you a wonderfully startling thing or two."

She scoffed. "I highly doubt it."

"All I need is space and opportunity," I stated with a wide grin that became a rictus of naughtiness.

She planted both her silver-ringed hands on her desk, metal clinking loudly against marble like Chinese gongs, and leaned in close enough to discover - through a warm exhale of a breath I forgot I was holding - that I had a grilled cheese, three Heinekens, and two cigarettes for breakfast. Which was also close enough to admire the leather and oil smell of my cut that usually got a woman on her back with her legs spread wide open trying to wrap herself in the scent and around me.

The bossy brunette's eyes outlined my mouth but the rest of her offered no clue to the nature of her thoughts.

Still, her actions and their meaning didn't matter in the grand scheme of escalating tensions once I realized she was close enough for me to inhale the intoxicating apple and cinnamon tones that comprised her womanly scent.

She smelled _so fucking good_.

If I could bottle her scent and sell it, _fuck_ Coco Chanel No. 5. _She_ is how every woman on earth should smell. The woman's essence launched my nips into a puckered tizzy. Tightness pooled in my abdomen, the pressure both a sweet agony and an unbearable torture. If she's a stickler for driving stick, then I'd gladly be the first to show her the benefits of riding tit  & clit. Because, truth be told, I would never get enough of her scent.

With a curl of mischief on her lips the mayor beckoned, "Then, have a seat," and motioned toward a nearby chair with a flourish of an upturned palm as if offering her business card to someone she just met at grocery store. "There's your needed _space_."

Her other hand retrieved an ancient looking smartphone from a charge cradle and speed-dialed somebody she placed on speakerphone while holding the phone close to her mouth like a cupcake she was going to devour, "We're about to discover just how keen you are on the _opportunity_ to have Sheriff Graham wrestle you to the ground. I imagine he will not present your usual experience in that regard."

I welcomed the offered seat, plopping down loudly. "So, you like to watch? Think you can get him to bring some friends along for our floor romp? Or are you too ice queen to get down like that?"

For her part, she rolled with a poker face, effortlessly lowering herself back into her leather throne.

Dammit if she's not a fucking _Venus_.

And, well, a fucking _Venus Flytrap_.

"Trust me, dear," she started matter-of-factly, 'You do not wish to witness how I _get down_ with the law," she concluded, growing irked over continuing to hear a dial tone. It's not lost on me that she's mirroring my language. She has an edge to her. All feisty fire. I want to burn to ashes inside her flames.

"Lady, you have no idea," I chortled. "I imagine that would be an infinitely more beautiful sight than you cowering _behind_ the law."

She cradled her phone in the palm of her hand. Began to text with one thumb as she spoke, "Involving the law in our little scrabble means you aren't worth my thorough consideration," she said, finally settling her gorgeous eyes on me slouching in her chair.

Like a kid thoroughly chastised, and a fucking idiot, I corrected my posture, unfurling to sit ramrod straight. She lit a fire under my ass with the knowing smirk she flung at me.

Pulling my cut in closer to my sides when she returned her phone to its cradle, I countered, " _Gosh_ , I don't know what to say after becoming so besotted with your wonderful hospitality, except that you had no fucking reason to block our party permit or liquor license."

Whatever threat this Sheriff Graham turned out to be, he certainly wasn't going to be a _punctual_ one. A second later, that fact was made crystal when her call went straight to voicemail, what with the auditory cue of "You've reached the voicemail of Sheriff Graham. Please leave your message at the dingy."

Gotta love small town ineffectual cops. If Charming Knights can't line this sheriff's pockets - one who rocked an accented voice - with foldable or smokable green, then we'll ply him with lickable pussy to make him our biggest cheerleader.

The mayor shifted slightly in her chair, loose strands of frisky hair invaded her face before she pinned them behind her ears. Through her body language and how dejectedly she hit the "end" icon on her call, it was easy to decipher that she finally arrived at the same conclusion I had moments ago: she's on her own and desperately needs a new tactic.

"I haven't the slightest idea what you're referring to," she offered too quickly but confidently. "While I do peruse hundreds of documents in a single day, I certainly would recall seeing any paperwork associated with an organization such as your own. If, in fact, said paperwork had crossed my desk. Alas, it did not."

"Right," I chimed, crossing my boots at the ankles, wiggling them. "Let's say you deliver that mayoral speech again but this time you hand me a soundbite in your cute politician language that contains the literal truth."

For what seemed like an eternity, but was only a few seconds, she weighed my words. I almost thought I played my cards wrong until a slow, sexy-as-all-hell smile enveloped the lower half of her face. "How would you like a glass of the best cider you've ever tasted?"

"Pst," I huffed. "I don't rock cider. Too little kick for the ride it's trying to give you. Got anything stronger?"

"Whiskey _neat_?"

"Slap in two tiny igloos."

"Curious," she said, drumming her fingers along her desk's edge. Perhaps stalling for time until whoever the fuck she texted arrived.

"How so?" I was thirsty-as-hell and would be crazy-as-hell to turn down a free drink. Hopefully, she wouldn't dropkick me with a slipped roofie. She didn't seem the type to be so callous but she was definitely not living in a glass house. So. Fingers crossed.

"I pegged you for one who didn't beat around the bush when it came to her liver killers," she said with a disarming smile.

"I like for things to be cool at first on my lips then warm up later in my hands," I retorted, looking unimpressed as I nodded and pursed my lips. "This drink you're offering makes itself or what?"

"Goodness, where are my manners?" She quipped, flashing a wholly amused smile.

"Might wanna get that checked out. Forgetting simple shit is a blatant red flag for busted brain syndrome."

"You don't say," she said, returning to her composed state as she rose from her chair, dignified and commanding like a supreme court judge dismissing court proceedings, and sashayed to a painting of an apple tree mounted on a wall. "Although I'd posit there's nothing simple about our unexpected meeting. Well, far be it from me to hope this encounter will become quite forgettable."

"Nah, lady. It's rather like herpes. Gonna stick to you and flare up on you every now and again." I said, realizing I had my eyes trained on her feet. Her heels defied gravity under her calculated strides as they click-clanked against the floor and -

_Oh my fucking gods ... I KNEW IT!_

She's an evil bitch goddess with a firm _ROUND_ ass that won't quit your dreams for nothing. An ass I'd get locked up in the worst prison in the shittiest, most lawless country in the world just to see disrobed before me.

_Fuck me._

My panties were _drenched_. Again. I wanted to slowly moan against the shell of her ear: "Woman, come swim in me." Instead - and wisely - I cleared the constricting lust from my throat with a coughed _humphf_.

She stopped her movements for a split second, perhaps a preternaturally knowing pause, before she tugged one side of the painting from the wall to reveal several hidden shelves of alcoholic drinks, a tiny cooler of ice, and tumblers.

"Hmm, now there's an image to get you in a drinking mood," she said, her back facing me and her ass still _speaking_ to me, "Our ceasefire deal is, I ply you with a drink and you tell me the _real_ reason why you're being especially obstinate about leaving my town."

"First thing's first," I replied, my eyes agog as I squirmed in the chair like a school kid with her hand up dying to answer a question. "Charming Knights been in Storybrooke a while and we haven't done a damn thing. So, why do you want to ban the big kids from your playground?"

Truthfully, all we've done so far was throw a kickass party on our lease-to-own property to loosen our nerves. Hell, even the women we panty popped were hangarounds from Boston with the sole exception of Puppet Boy's local gal. Our arrival and settling down phases were both uncharacteristically tame. We usually barged in all barbarian horde style and turned a new locale into Sodom & Gomorrah real quick.

_Damn._

I didn't know why it was so important for me to hear this mayor's side of things. But I needed to hear her explanation - and especially her _voice_ \- as if were hardwired into my DNA.

She was milking my weakness for all it was worth. "At this point in your life," she said, sidling next to me - and _oh so close_ to my errant fingers - to rest that delectable ass of hers against the edge of her desk while brandishing two glasses with two ice cubes in each. She began to pour that sweet dark amber liquid into them, "Do you even need to ask?"

She proffered me the drink, looking me in the eyes while she passed the alcoholic baton.

"I could operate on assumptions. But knowledge is power. Power is transformative. Stop me if you've heard this PSA before," I replied, taking the drink from her hand, smarting over being unable to touch her fingers during the transfer. She did not allow that possibility with the way she held the glass like she was serving a shot of poison. I almost whined like a housebroken puppy that needed to pee.

She fingered the rim of her glass and then brought it to her lips. "You _sound_ intelligent and yet you're currently displaying great difficulty in making the two puzzle pieces of a two-piece puzzle fit together."

She took an excruciatingly long sip. One that brought all my attention back to her moist lips. Gods, the _things_ I could do to her lips that don't even begin with _kissing_.

I tossed back my libation in one gulp, forgoing deep detection of the drink's notes in favor of a harsh kickback in my throat; the noticeably shrinking ice cubes gave my nose the brusque wake-up call my brain needed as they bowled into my skin. 

I'm not here to window shop or to sample. 

But, _damn_ ... 

Those hard browns of hers glued themselves to my neck again. The large swan inked there probably look like it'd take flight toward her face. The other tats in the area hold less meaning to me, but something tells me she was making up her own stories about my body art. Dirty ones, I hope, because I have a lot of tats - most of them in places she can't see … but could. 

_Fuck, fuck, fuck_. 

**[SQ biker SQ] [SQ biker SQ]**

Running my fingers through my loose blonde locks that tickled my neck in the frosty office air, I blew out a long breath and mentally prepared to lay into this bitch hard so I wouldn't want lay down with her, and well, do that _hard_.

"Dammit, lady, who shat in your cup of hot water and told you it was hot cocoa?" 

She looked me straight in the eyes. 

"I'm the mayor of a wealthy hideaway seaside town with a majestic natural forest nearby. I've considered the types of visitors such a setting will attract, what that increased traffic could spell for my town and the very decent people living within it, and have done so in a manner befitting more than just a little bit." 

"There's no law against throwing parties in your precious little shit town." 

"What is your name?" She asked calmly. 

The innocuous seeming question was left field. But that was the exact point. She wanted to regain control of the conversation. 

"Angry bitch," I hurled at that beautiful chin of hers. Couldn't help the devious smile that took up residence across my entire face, revealing my dimples. She parked pleasantly surprised eyes on those little buggers. 

"I've surmised that's your _mood_ from your grandiosely choreographed entrance into my office," she said, slinking back behind her desk and lowering herself, once again with grace, into her chair. An air of refinement adorned her like royal armor. "Should I call you _Savior_ while we continue to converse or do you have a government issued name?" 

"Bite me," I grunted, spinning the tiny ice cubes around my glass. 

She chuckled. "Not without proper introductions, dear." 

I huffed with a shrug, inwardly glowing from this wholly exasperating yet insufferably sexy woman's surprise playfulness. It took every speck of willpower I possessed not to press the matter and bite her first. 

"It's Swan." 

"Is that a first or last name?" 

Like every other small town or city official the Charming Knights have encountered, she's asking for my name because she wants to run a full spread on my history through some nefarious backdoor channel. Gather some info she can hold over my head like the Sword of Damocles. If she's successful with her hunt, she'll pull up a rap sheet so long, she could slide from Maine to China on that fucker. 

Yeah, lots of interesting backstory to work with. For starters, how I could return to her Town Hall in the dead of night with my tools and pilfer a lot of her fancy shit. Her office is something straight outta the palace at Versailles. Get my boy Will up in here with me and we can do some true damage.

"It is what it is," I said curtly. "But the annoying prattle spewing from your beautiful mouth still ain't the truth. Can't say how long this cordial ceasefire of ours will last without it." 

"Your documents never _once_ crossed my desk," she prevaricated with more force than necessary and in a register that competed with the finest operatic sopranos. It practically screamed _I'm a tell and she's a liar_. 

I looked askance at her. "Ding, dang, dong. That's my bullshit meter going off the Richter scale," I said, leaning one elbow on my knee and taking in her unreadable face. "Look, you gave me a drink so I'll give you another chance to come at me with something, _anything_ remotely resembling the truth. Because that there was not it, lady. Not for one minute did I believe that shit." 

"Be that as it may, it's the _truth_. Whether you believe what I've said or not doesn't render its veracity invalid. If your papers were denied, my best guess is someone on your end did not fill them out correctly or did not file them properly. I'm unable to confirm either of those occurrences because, again, I never handled your paperwork. This is becoming -" 

"Whoa nelly!" I interjected, abruptly popping up in her chair like a jack-in-the-box. She didn't so much as flinch. "Now that was the biggest load of crap I've ever heard." 

"I'm pretty sure that's not true," she bit out, a hand slowly flexing toward a paper stack while her other continued to nurse her drink. 

"Wrong as piss in pecan pie," I said, my words oozing with vitriol. I readjusted my posture and the handle of my blade inadvertently greeted us both. She spied my steel and then read my face, searching for intent. I simply shrugged. I usually didn't allow "talks" to carry on this long without a resolution in my favor, forced or not, but I was all about us using our big girl words (and occasional profanity.) 

It didn't escape my attention that I was affording this major an inordinate amount of leeway due to my knuckleheaded attraction to everything about her, including her ability to lie as if it were as subconsciously automatic to her existence as breathing. "My girl Belle does not make anything on the order of a mistake when it comes to drafting or filing legal shit. She's the very definition of exacting. That, and she's a _lawyer_." 

Belle "Beauty" French wasn't just some lawyer we knew. She's Charming Knights royalty. Her father's a founding member along with Prince Charming's father. He's also a real crotchety sonofabitch who's especially proud of the fact that his saggy old balls sired a little girl who restored a Harley for him all by herself at age thirteen and scored a 1600 on her SATs without prep three years later. 

This brunette bitch can continuing playing any game she damn well fancies with me, but insinuating that Belle suddenly popped a brain aneurysm that prevented her from hitting the law bullseye was a bottom barrel crowbar tactic. 

"Given your distinctive career choice, having a lawyer on retainer is a rather prudent course of action," she supplied. "So is complaining to the proper civil servant. You see, liquor and public grounds gathering permits do not warrant my attention because my office is not the _permits_ office." 

"What the hell, lady? Being _mayor_ of a crap town in the middle of the boondocks means you can approve any and all shit," I gritted through teeth so tightly clenched I'd have to shell out thousands of dollars for orthodontic work to correct the impending twisted alignment. 

"Here's a novel idea," she said with a sing-songy cadence, her fingers cradling a document she was shifting toward a metal tray marked Next Quarter. "You cease telling me how to do a job I've performed successfully for the past _seven_ years and just file another permit." 

That superciliousness shit inspired a primal kind of anger. "No." 

" _No?_ " She parroted with a quirked eyebrow. 

"No." 

"How do you propose to obtain a permit otherwise?" She asked, brow deeply furrowed as if it were completely soul-sapping to crest the tall mountains of my obtuseness. "Especially a _notarized_ one," she added, needling me with her mounting confidence. 

"I'm going to slap two sheets of paper on your desk and _you're_ going to sign them. Then a nerdy little dude I know named Doc will handle the rest. That's the fuck how." 

Officially, Doc's our Treasurer. He's also our notary, soldier, spy, plumber, babysitter, whatever the hell we needed because he's a jack of all trades and doesn't know what to do with himself if there's nothing for him to do. If I delivered this intractable mayor's signature on our papers, Doc would make it rain diamonds because that'll give him some time-zapping shit to do. 

But this mayor's beautiful face twitched into a wretched canvas resembling a constipated schoolmarm's reproachful glare, and I knew shit would hit the fan and get blown every-fucking-where but in the direction of her signing my permits. 

"I will do no such thing," she asserted forcibly, "If you continue to believe I will, then you _are_ the dimwitted backwater miscreant I pegged you for earlier." 

I pushed myself off her chair lightening quick, cocking an intimidating lean to my head as I leveled a snarl at her. "Why don't you unscrew that penis you've been fucking me with all morning and come at me like a _real_ woman," I derided, ring-tossing my whiskey glass onto her desk where it clanged violently and spilled its melted water before rolling onto its side. "You might actually enjoy not being a lying cunt," I jeered. 

She stopped the whiskey glass' travels with a tense hand and coal black eyes. "If you remain in my office one second longer," she hissed, voice brimming with the underpinnings of a growl. Her entire posture tightened as she hit me with the unbridled fury powering her eyes. "You will not _enjoy_ the consequences. This is not a threat. This is not even a promise. This is simple unadulterated _fact_. Now get out of my office," she clipped. 

"No fucking sheriff here, _remember_?" I guffawed. 

Then, I slammed my palms down on the paper stack in front of her. Our hands mere centimeters away from grazing each other. I briefly wondered if her fingers would feel soft or hard tracing over the design paths of my tats and silently admonished myself for the weakness. "And I'll stop you before you can call him or your sleeping beauty secretary again." 

She stiffened even more. A vicious sneer curled at the right corner of her mouth as she tightly gripped her whiskey glass like she wanted to brain me with the fucker. 

"Get the hell away from me before I make-" 

"How?" I interrupted, pinning her with an intense gaze. I leaned over her desk, almost face-to-face, invading her personal space like a virus run amok in her lymph nodes. Despite running the full spectrum of emotions and settling on unraveling anger, I did not want to physically hurt her - not in a way that couldn't be soothed afterwards with slow kisses. I also didn't want to painfully extract shards of glass from my fucking face. But I had to instill the fear of the gods in her. All for pieces of paper. "You're not packing any _heat_ ," I added. 

"Are you out of your mind?" She demanded, not squirming under my stare but meeting me blink for blink. Fuck if that didn't make me respect and desire her even more. 

"Naw, I'm uniquely within it. The thing is, I actually hate playing the part of an outlaw biker stereotype," I said, anxiousness seizing my gut. "But they say the world is a stage. So, what the hell. I'll be an Oscar-winning actress today. My club tried doing things the right way and that wasn't good enough for _you_. Now you'll do things my way because that's good enough for _me_ ," I retrieved my pistol, thumbed the safety off, swung it up fast to rest it sideways on her desk with my finger on the trigger. 

Enraged brown eyes momentarily captured my iron occupying the desk then tracked upward to my jawline. 

"Is that supposed to _frighten_ me?" 

"Let's just say it should _inspire_ you." 

"Not unless you can use it properly, dear." 

"There's more than one way to use it, lady, and none of them are going to feel as good to your flesh and bone as putting pen to paper." 

"Why don't you entertain me with a fascinating tidbit about one of those ways," she said, slowly enunciating each word as if she were talking to a child or a non-native English speaker. 

"Are you for fucking _real_?" I lobbed at her, genuinely dumbfounded at her nonchalant facetious demeanor. I was caught off guard for the first time by a woman who I hadn't even fucked. "You set the mark for how nasty this gets between me and you. _My_ unsolicited advice? Make the only choice there is and just accept that shit." 

"What are you going to do if I do not _just accept it_?" She asked cuttingly, her words slicing and dicing my bikerhood like razors. She schlepped her drink to her taunting mouth, quickly draining every last drop before calmly depositing the glass back on her desk. "Kiss me?" 

She narrowed her eyes down to slits, shooting red-hot pokers at my chin. " _Kill_ me?" 

"Lady -" 

" _My_ unsolicited advice?" She interrupted, arrogantly arching a brow, "Make up your mind expeditiously and definitively, dear. Because you're gravely out of your element and I'm vastly out of your league." 

I couldn't even … 

There were no words ... 

The enormity of her defiance forced an out-of-body experience. My breathing was nonexistent, my heart far from beating in my chest, and the fire behind my eyes millions of light years away. I felt a nothingness and a heaviness all at once. I must have appeared queasy to her; the last thing I consciously registered her doing was opening her mouth in an "O" shape. 

The memory of my personal credo being tattooed across my nape in calligraphic lettering snapped me out of my preternaturally quick otherworldly haze and deposited me back into my body. 

_Think Before You Sink ..._

They call me "Savior" because I bail my club outta tight spots and finesse my way out of situations like this before things escalate to the point of no return. 

That's my claim to fame. 

But here we were at the precipice. 

I knew exactly what I had to do and I hated myself for my willingness to do it. Immediately pushed that self-hatred out to my fingers where it danced on the flames of my fierce determination like a whirling dervish. 

I siphoned in a cathartic breath, heating my throat and lungs past the point of scratchy pain. 

She left me no choice. 

**

[SQ biker SQ] [SQ biker SQ]

**

I cocked my pistol and pointed the business end at her left tit without compunction. 

"You don't know me, _Madame Mayor_ , and you don't know my real name. Most importantly, you have no idea what _I'm_ capable of. You think you do, but that's a highly dangerous line of imagining. A real deal death trap, if you will. So you gotta ask yourself two salient questions. Would someone you once pegged as a dimwitted backwater miscreant carry a loaded pistol if she _didn't_ intend to use it? If she hadn't _already_ used it? You wanna take a chance on me not using this iron pointed at your tit, then by all means _refuse_ ," I dictated icily, shifting the gun slightly to my right while I rummaged through my cut's pocket for the forms in question. 

My blood and my breaths thrummed in my ears as I slammed the papers next to her whiskey glass, blanketing her forearm with them. 

Her eyes never once left my jawline. The devil himself should be wary of her. 

"But, we both know you have no good reason to take that chance and every reason to want me to simply walk away. Especially if whoever you texted earlier happens to chance upon my brothers who are waiting outside your fancy building armed with more than just their devil-may-care attitudes. No, you're too intelligent and too classy to make a costly mistake. So, you won't refuse me. Not when you consider these papers trivial but the girl with a loaded gun considers them paramount." 

The brunette's breathing stilled for several seconds as her prominent forehead vein swelled to epic proportions. She shot a furtive glance at my iron before stabbing me in the eyes with her undivided attention. 

I granted her the reprieve, then I plowed my message home, "Now tell me that ain't simple unadulterated fucking _fact_." 

She bit back those razor sharp retorts that must be second nature; her mouth opening and then closing like an exotic tropical fish taking in air. She didn't hold back out of fear or out of resignation. You don't wear the look she had on her face due to either of those conditions. 

The look in her eyes told me she was beyond the realm of any emotion's reach except the resolute one of inextinguishable righteous indignation she leveled at me. Hellfire consumed her eyes, burning brighter than a million suns, yet she was _eerily_ calm. To the initiated there was no mistaking the reality that her calmness was indeed a palatable fury capable of manifesting itself in a wholly incalculable and dangerous manner. 

She released her grip on her glass. "This is the iceberg's tip, _Swan_ ," she said, low and menacing and deadlier than I ever thought a woman could muster from such a lithe frame. She mashed her pen's chisel tip to one permit but did not move to sign it. Her eyes zeroed on my greens with such deadly precision a muscle in my jaw jerked. "If you sail full speed ahead, there will be no lifeboats." 

The raging inferno in her eyes and the pounce-ready tilt to her shoulders brooked no room for argument. 

So I held a speedy debate the only place I could: inside my head. 

_Did I overreact?_

_Did I feel any guilt?_

Didn't matter. 

Couldn't matter. 

She had to sign those papers. 

I had to make her. 

"I do what needs to be done," I snapped back. I didn't have a single doubt in my mind whether or not shit just got real. I won this fight the only way a loyal rider could when pressed to the cliff's edge: big guns out. Real ain't the half of it. 

This shit between us - _all of it_ \- wasn't over by a long shot. 

With one quick fluid motion she inked her John Hancock on both forms and slid them to my side of her desk. "Well, that makes _two_ of us, dear." 

Butterflies fluttered frantically in my stomach like they were trapped in a burning room and couldn't escape. An anxious, almost giddy anticipation consumed my features as my vagina became sired to her voice. Her obedient thrall. I had no right to feel even an inkling of desire in that moment. But I'm an outlaw and this mayor was unlike any woman I've ever met. 

She's the type who knew all about winning the long war; _all in_ like a lifer and that was simultaneously a wonderful and a terrible thing. She has mad heart and likely could rip a fucker's out without flinching. 

_A bad bitch indeed_. 

"Good," I prodded with disdain, scooping up the papers and pointing my iron's barrel at the floor as I backed away from her desk and eased up on the trigger. Unable to leave shit alone or peel my eyes away from her unwavering stare I added, "Might make things interesting around here." 

Her self-control was staggeringly resolute, but a vicious, hungry beast lurked beneath the surface. It called to the hairs on my arms, prompting them to grow erect and point toward her like tiny rods of iron being tugged by a magnet. My skin heated in the silence, jettisoning its intensity between us like solar flares. 

This unassailable woman slowly quirked a dark brow. 

"Oh, things will be particularly interesting," she ground out with an impossible degree of anger, her eyes brutally challenging as her lips contorted into an almost thin line. "Because I'm going to bury each and every one of you Charming Knights six feet under my town _if it is the last thing I do_." 

I watched in arrested fascination as the Mona Lisa smile on her face grew horrifyingly dark, confirming the conviction of her words with uncanny accuracy. 

The problem was, even after everything that just transpired between us, that Machiavellian smirk of hers did it for me. She wanted to rain shit down on me and my club, I mean utterly destroy us, and all I wanted to do was taste every inch of her until _that_ utterly destroyed me. 

When my brothers got wind of what I've wrought on our MC, they'd put me on grunt chores for months like a lowly Prospect until I redeemed myself. 

Scratch that. Once Prince Charming discovered how this all went down, fuck a furious recrimination or some menial chore duty. He'd also place my bike under lock and key with a guard standing by, effectively keeping me from enjoying the one ride between my legs that's more rewarding than sex. 

_Fuckit_. 

I'm a glutton for punishment and pain. They're a pack of M &Ms to me. 

Suppressing a smirk of my own, one that inevitably would've revealed just how much the pure adrenaline coursing through my veins and the ignominious curiosity assailing my clit rendered me momentarily witless, I flicked my M1911's safety on and tucked it into my pants. 

I just showed her a glimpse of the real me. 

I sure as fuck wanted to know all of the real her. 

I slid her a chin jerk in acknowledgement of the gauntlet she just threw down at my club's feet and said the only thing that could be said when you squared off against a titan of womanhood and you were a damn fool looking forward to the battle because no one, not even this woman who set your soul on fire, was gonna catch sight of that scared little orphan Annie you once were - _not ever_. 

"Your move bitch." 

**To Be Continued ...**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Please let me know your thoughts, suggestions, feelings, rants about this chapter!**  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> **Up Next: Regina's POV!**  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> But first, quiz time! Just kidding. Here's a list of "biker" slang terms used in this chapter.
> 
> MC = motorcycle club/biker gang
> 
> clubhouse = MC's home or compound where its members hangout, conduct business/meetings, have parties/orgies and live (if they don't have homes of their own)
> 
> patched-in = full member of a MC
> 
> brothers = term of endearment and respect used between MC members (in Emma's case she's a "sister")
> 
> bikes = motorcycles
> 
> chromosexual = someone who loves customizing a motorcycle
> 
> brain buckets = helmets
> 
> backwarmer = a woman riding "bitch" on a bike (sitting in the "bitch seat" or the space on a motorcycle's seat directly behind the bike rider; "backseat")
> 
> get shot of (someone) = break up with someone
> 
> old lady = wife or serious girlfriend of a biker who is recognized by members of the MC as being off limits to anyone other than her husband/wife or boyfriend/girlfriend who is a member of the MC
> 
> hardbody = a sexy woman
> 
> road warrior = a lone wolf (and usually violent) biker who lives on the road and calls it home
> 
> nomad = a biker affiliated with a MC that doesn't call any particular city its home
> 
> church = an important MC meeting that can't be skipped unless by permission from a MC's President or Vice President and that only patched-in MC members with voting rights can attend
> 
> chapel = room in a MC's clubhouse where important discussions happen like church, only patched-in members enter this room unless special permission is given or a prospect is being voted into the MC
> 
> prospect = someone working towards becoming a full member of a MC who must prove worthiness by doing anything and everything a patched-in member says and who must be voted into the MC by an unanimous vote
> 
> a run = a trip or mission, usually out of town but basically anywhere outside club property
> 
> duck-walking = moving your bike with your feet when it's in neutral and you're still straddled on it
> 
> cut = a leather vest that is a sacred piece of clothing to members of an MC. It has a biker's patches and her/his MC's colors on it. It's never to be disgraced by being dirty, misplaced or stolen, left on a floor, or worn by anyone except the biker it belongs to.
> 
> colors = emblem/symbol/logo of an MC
> 
> road dog = travel companion
> 
> bed bunny = loose woman
> 
> citizen = a regular person with no bike life to their name
> 
> patches = badges sewn onto a cut that displays a biker's rank, road nic, MC name, MC origin city, and other info about the biker and her/his MC
> 
> road nic = nickname
> 
> heat = a gun (or the police)
> 
> steel = a knife or blade of any sort
> 
> iron = a gun


	2. Chapter One: Plans Within Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regina faces the immediate aftermath of Emma's gun-wielding antics by reconnecting with the darkly calculating side of her mayoral persona. Can moments with her son and her best friend tether Regina to her morality? Or will strict adherence to her war path's agenda push her toward a deal with the devil?
> 
> Your time and your comments are most appreciated. : )
> 
> _Sidebar: This chapter is longer than other chapters due to setting up several of the major conflicts for the first half of the story. Remaining chapters should go live more frequently due to their much shorter lengths (3500 ~ 9000 words)._

**

_REGINA MILLS_

**

I heard the scuffle of her black boots before her whimpering plea.

"Sorry I'm late touching base, Madame Mayor," Ariel squeaked out hesitantly, her shoulders slumping as she trundled half-way into my office like a mindless zombie who must have been egregiously vapid in her former life. She was certainly as such right now; on the verge of crocodile tears for reasons that probably centered on her having broken a fingernail instead of her being the bane of my professional existence. "I ran into a small snag during my morning fifteen."

It was only scant seconds away from 10:30 am, but Ariel's incompetence adhered to no bounds.

"I can work nonstop until four to finish sorting the grant proposals," she muttered, as if hoping her half-hearted offer was immediately rejected so she could spend the evening partying with friends.

Eyeing Ariel contemptuously as I stood catty corner to one of my office windows, I sighed slowly to tamp down my rising ire. I was immeasurably vexed, not solely because the exasperating redhead finally managed to pad into my office looking worn and weathered after several attempts to rouse her from an almost disconcerting bout of sleep, but because she was a tangible reminder of how that blonde psycho biker reduced me to an unfathomably low rank in my _own_ office, striping me of all regalia like a bloodthirsty mob intent on parading me through Storybrooke naked.

" _Where_ were you sorting the proposals?" I responded icily, surveying the two empty whiskey glasses perched on my desk and a mound of semi-wet papers strewn underneath one of them. Like polished graveyard tombstones, the glasses were lamentable visual cues signifying something precious I lost to that hooligan: my personal agency.

"I kinda hunkered down near the toner and paper supply cubby," she said, steadfastly clutching a yellow legal notepad to her chest like a Kevlar vest. The paper shield wouldn't protect her from a verbal shot of truth to the face.

The inefficacious redhead definitely looked the part of an accomplice to a bizarre crime helmed by a gun-toting gutter rat: hair a messy pile on her weak shoulders, clothes some rainbow bohemian abomination, boots more worn than the pyramids of Egypt, and makeup whatever she could pillage from a dollar store shelf and airbrush onto her face. I never imposed a dress code on the young intern because I wanted my second run as mayor to be more in tune with millennial sensibilities - more personal freedoms granted to yield more productivity. Not unlike the Google offices in California.

But the reigns would be held tighter now. Casual days and laissez faire governance abolished.

Ariel was high on the personal freedom and low on the actual productivity.

"The proposal presentations were due a _half hour_ ago. At which time you should have been at your desk _working_ ," I snapped derisively with barely concealed irritation and menace governing my voice.

Recrudescent anger swelled behind my eyes, morphing the russet windows to my soul into laser cannons. From Ariel's fidgety demeanor, I suspected she wasn't aware of what transpired in my office between myself and a hostile interloper, and therefore was clueless about her own culpability from being asleep at the wheel.

"I'm _so_ sorry," she began quickly. "I was... at my desk ... and … there's a bit more... sorting to do."

After two weeks of enduring her paid internship in the interest of affecting favorable PR, today's incident made one thing crystal: Ariel's level of incompetence was thoroughly ingrained and inexcusably permanent.

Her increasing fallibility came as no parts shocking to me. Ariel originated from a family of overly chipper hippie stock, and it appears as though her kin never introduced her to the concept of repercussions for imperfection. They likely raised her to believe that everything she did, no matter how immeasurably devastating, was easily forgiven as long as she appeared to prostrate herself.

In stark contrast, since my days noshing on carrots with chubby toddler fingers, I was taught very harsh truisms - chief among them being _love was a weakness_ \- at the hands of my mother Cora, an officious woman who wasted no time explaining my origin as being resultant from a late-in-life mishap of biology and vodka, and my sycophant older sister Zelena who priggishly echoed that sentiment whenever a conversationalist pointed out her ten years of unremarkable life that preceded the start of my own. Lauded as the world's leading experts in Child  & Adolescent Psychiatry and Neuropsychiatry, respectively, their collective brand of passive aggressive tutelage was as supportive to my developing psyche as a dentist's drill to a set of unanesthetized diseased gums.

But one life lesson stuck because it rang true during my formative years at a private middle school, a time and place where preteen girls had more things in common with bone-crushing alligators than they did the rest of humanity.

_Sincere kindness was the tool of a fool._

Regina Maria Mills was _no one's_ fool.

"Roughly estimated," - because the gods only knew the exact figure - "how far along are you in the sorting process?"

"I-I kinda just ... got started…" she flustered, wincing in anticipation of receiving one of my patented insults. That, or a slap. I was not opposed to supplying her with _both_. But lessons imparted through violence fertilized vengeance.

I wanted to eviscerate that blonde invader due to that very flaw of human nature.

" _Excuse_ me?" I demanded, spinning my body to face Ariel with my arms crossed at my chest. I stared at her, mouth agape and eyes pulsing with intense revulsion, as if she were speaking a completely unknown language from a large alien mouth on her forehead.

"Dr. Whale calibrated my allergy meds, and now the morning doses make me super drowsy at random times. I kinda got backlogged due to … I have most of the grants separated by projected amounts requested. I just need an extension," she explained, rocking back on the heel of her left boot and nearly keeling over on her side.

I have never desired to know her entire life story. What I wanted was for her to complete at least one of her assigned duties, even if, at this point, that was accomplished with only a smidgen of actual accuracy. My office required the grant selection to be completed last Friday to increase our town's capacity to compete for state and federal funding.

There were other unfinished projects that required her attention, too. Ariel's employment as a parlay to good PR was not worth an aneurysm.

I massaged both my temples with my index fingers to stave off another impending headache. I was already envisioning the insipid young woman choking on a wad of paper ripped from her legal pad. I recognized the violence of my imaginings, and the twisting tight knots forming in my belly, as possibly stemming from a budding minute form of PTSD.

After all, just earlier today, a lunatic barreled into my office and held me at gunpoint.

The blonde's voice still vibrated through my gut, unbidden and undesired, as it propagated within my bloodstream and coiled around my spine. Gruff, lusty, and deep, her growled challenge sent frissons of fury and an odd euphoria streaming through my body, scorching cold nerve endings as it rumbled over and under my skin until all that was left in its wake was a tumorous mass of my own deadly intentions.

**_Your move bitch…_ **

I absolutely detested that that biker's voice melted down a large chunk of my glacial walls, the cold exterior I was raised to erect as a defensive and offensive coping mechanism, leaving me to drown in a tsunami of indignation and resentment.

As if tussling daily with idiotic town council members who didn't know their left hand from a road repair budget wasn't enough troublesome burden on my shoulders, I now had to contend with a truly lawless criminal element riding around my town.

The instant replay of that thug's aberrant and abhorrent actions constantly cropped up in my waking thoughts that were once unsullied and unencumbered, like she was some special brand of OCD specific only to me. I was cogitating about the blonde barbarian more than I did my all-important work schedule.

_All because of Ariel._

But I fancied myself a commensurate politician.

I seldom blew my top; doing so left one unprotected and transparent.

I've done questionable, risque and even _deplorable_ things in my thirty-four years of life.

But the one thing I did not do - save for when it involved my loved ones - was _vulnerable._

Releasing a barely audible 'tsk-tsk' as I shook my head, I bit back the urge to curse.

"And how much time should this extension consist of? Four hours? Weeks? _Years?_ Do you think the people who dedicated hundreds of hours drafting the painstakingly detailed proposals they submitted on time - which attract lifeblood funding for their nonprofit institutions and fledgling companies - will appreciate my office not being able to reveal the grants that will go before the submissions committee by Wednesday's deadline? A deadline that was set by my _own_ hand? They expect the common courtesy of professionalism," I chimed, breathing in deeply to center myself. "Now that you are armed with _those_ considerations, what do you think is an acceptable time frame for such a costly extension?

Ariel's chin lolled forward to her chest like a thoroughly supplicant dog heeding her master's reprimands.

"I-I'm not so sure..." she began, her mouth flapping about wildly as she relayed nothing of significance for what seemed like a lifetime.

Then the roar of revved up engines assaulted the air, rattling the wall of expensive tempered glass windows in my office like an earthquake.

**[SQ mayor SQ] [SQ mayor SQ]**

Ariel sprinted to a window and drew back the curtain, eyes wide with giddy interest like the immature child she was.

I whipped my eyes toward the streets outside my window, tucked a loose strand of hair obstructing my view, and trained my furious cross-hairs on the squared shoulders of that leather clad blonde idiot as she meandered through the Town Hall front lawn.

When she approached two similarly dressed male cronies who were perched on their bikes, they saluted her with more mocking revs from those infernal metal monstrosities. Like a trained circus animal, the blonde waved those damnable permits at them in a triumphant dance comprised of her lewdly thrusting her taut midsection toward their grinning chins.

She finished her bawdy performance by tucking her golden Medusa locks under her helmet, cockily straddling her bike and, as if preternaturally able to feel my steely gaze upon her back, raising a ringed middle finger toward my window before zooming down Main Street at the speed of light with her "brothers" in tow.

I slowly exhaled, drunk on a deadly mix of unmitigated anger and, gods be damned, curious _arousal_.

Like a newly released captive with an acute case of Stockholm Syndrome, my mind recalled the deep curl of the blonde's unpainted lips as she raked her lascivious gaze over my body. I imagined them tracing a wet hot line from my clavicle to the nape of my neck before forcing them to meet my ruby lips in a fierce battle for purchase until our dueling tongues pillaged both our mouths of all available air.

There was no mistaking the sexual energy present in the room whenever her eyes twinkled with more than hatred in their verdant depths. She likely had my entire facial makeup and body structure mapped out in the neurons of her mind with greater accuracy than any cartographer's charting skills.

I certainly noticed an abundance of things about her. The rough history within her eyes that were a magnificent twinkling emerald when she wasn't spewing inane drivel. The hardness of her arm musculature that seemed to be able to carry the weight of the world with bravado. The gruff lilt to her voice that spun her biker vernacular into an distinctive poetry that incited more than just verbal responses. The tight svelte bodice wrapped in curve-choking leather and denim - _and so many dirty-sexy-cool tattoos_ \- that bespoke of an energetic and animalistic love-making prowess.

And all of that seemed incongruous with the playfulness of the flaxen hair cascading down her strong shoulders and - _my gods_ \- the inviting sensuality of her delightfully unexpected dimples.

(A _female_ biker with _dimples_!)

As her biker vibes monopolized my office, my body was on red alert even as my anger hit a deafening crescendo; my heart pumped to insanely fast rhythms, funneling heated blood to nooks and crannies that had never been transgressed.

I was never, _ever_ that uncontrollably attracted to another person. Not even to my beloved, late husband Daniel Colter, and he was the embodiment of everything a woman could ask for in a lover: kind, caring, adoring, thoughtful, strong, funny, patient, supportive, smart, loving, playful, and romantic.

Daniel was so different.

So unique.

So _perfect_.

I simultaneously despaired and balked at the notion that anyone could ignite desires and sensations inside me that drove me to crave her - even if it was purely sexual - more than I had the first, the last, and the _only_ great love of my life. The man who gave me the brightest light in my life and the only goodness in my soul, my four year old son Henry Daniel.

I knew these intrusive moments of ruminating on that antagonistic female hoodlum meant nothing.

 _Were_ nothing.

There was her immensely attractive body then there was her wholly unattractive _everything else_.

It was surreal ... when she deftly cocked her "iron" and pointed it at me, I was not paralyzed with fear or indecision.

Instead, I caught her off guard by simply being who I was.

And who I was was not a _victim_.

Never, _ever_ again a victim.

The prickly tension hammering my eyes multiplied exponentially in its intensity as I focused my attentions back on Ariel. I twisted the silver ring on my right index finger, toying with the stones in a subconscious attempt to reign in my contempt and slow the thrumming of my heartbeat in my temples.

I unceremoniously motioned for Ariel to sit down.

"Did you still need me to collate the binders from the Parks Department's renovations proposal too"? She asked with a noticeable pout as she lowered herself into the very same chair that once held a very different sort of woman.

One who knew exactly what she wanted and exactly how to take it.

Ariel reeked of inaction; her presence was doused in the salty scent characteristic of someone who recently had one side of her face plastered in drool. It interspersed terribly within the still lingering scent of motor oil and cigarettes, the rude remnants of that tattooed woman who savagely forced me to sign permits I had every intention of sabotaging. The combined offending odors sent me careening over the threshold of pain.

I spun on my Louboutins and slinked into my chair, welcoming the coldness of the fine leather as it somehow began to erase the memory of having spent several minutes trapped in it with a trigger-happy hick playing at Turkish prison towering over me. The lack of warmth meant a new set of conditions from which to mount an attack.

Quirking an irritated brow at Ariel who eyed me intently, I retrieved a bottle of Tylenol from my desk and dry swallowed the recommended dose - my second such dosage since six am this morning - and smirked as I shoved the re-capped bottle back into its dark storage space.

_It's called Tylenol and sex …_

No, dear, it's called having difficult dilemmas and needing practical solutions.

Things a recalcitrant criminal knew _nothing_ about.

As mayor to a small town, I trafficked in numbers and facts.

For years Storybrooke's population plateaued at 9,432 souls who took pride in their 97% literacy rate and their 1.7% crime rate. Especially the crime rate of practically nil; it created the impression that their gobs of money and their staid lives were safe from 'poor city/big city' problems like outlaw bikers.

But as mother to a four year old, I operated in emotions and worries.

My beautiful, bright-eyed little sweet prince, like most small children, was a true believer in the good in people, the superhero standard of righteousness, and the fairy tale promise of happy endings - so much so that he'd have a cute little whimsical nickname for my war plans like _Operation Bye-Bye Bikers_.

Any threat to my son's way of life would always be met with extreme prejudice. That's not hubris or braggadocio speaking. It's the hardened resolve of an enraged mother bear protecting her cub from imminent danger. I never succumbed the illusion that my town's impressive metrics meant threats to our safety weren't real.

Oh, they were very _real_.

So, no, I didn't need Ariel to collate a mound of relatively unimportant papers.

I needed her to prevent violent riff-raff from entering my office.

"Nevermind the grants and proposals. We have a bigger problem at hand."

"We do?" She asked, looking at me with uncomprehending hazel eyes that mirrored my son's puppy dog ones. I would not allow Ariel's visage being reminiscent of my son's to penetrate my defenses.

I toed my right heel off and flexed my foot over my left ankle. An unladylike habit from my youth that my mother's frequent berating should have drummed out of my repertoire but somehow never could. No matter how hard she pushed, there was always a defiant part of me that raged on and survived.

"I should clarify. _You_ have a bigger problem at hand. I'm more than aware of what you were doing this morning when you were not screening calls or visitors to my office-"

"I'm sorry, Madame Mayor, I-"

I shot daggers at her cowering face.

"I trust you will not interrupt me again," I stated acidly, briefly waiting for the requisite nod of understanding. Once she slumped over in the chair, chastised chin to chest, I continued. "This morning, while you were bobble-heading at your desk, an outlaw biker calling herself Swan stormed into my office and absconded with several important documents."

"Should I call the sheriff?" She queried, shifting in the chair as if willing herself into prompt action to assuage her guilt.

Under normal circumstances, the call to arms would be welcomed. But I neither wanted to divulge every detail of my assault nor did I want her to recount how big a disappointment she was during it.

It would all reflect poorly on my mayoral reputation.

Besides, Graham eventually replied to my text and was due to clip-clop into my office in any second.

The lack of punctuality displayed by my subordinates - both within the same hour - was catastrophic; a myriad of oversights must be rectified and restructured in order for me to save face.

"Order yourself a cab," I replied evenly, moving the driest papers on my desk to a _'To Be Filed'_ metal tray.

"Where do you need me to go?" She asked, fishing her phone from one of about a thousand pockets on her pants.

At Ariel's age of twenty, I was already a junior executive armed with a bachelor's degree. Before achieving my MBA, I indulged in an eager brand of ruthlessness in order to climb the corporate ladder in NYC. The first financial firm to employ me, King Financial Group, had also supplied me with a rude awakening about capitalizing on your ambitions. I was employed scarcely for a week before the CEO, Leopold White, cornered me in the copy room and said, with his hand traveling speedily over my backside: "If you want to be an integral member of our financial team, then you need to show special attention to a key _member_ of my team, if you catch my drift."

I caught that obnoxious pig's drift and ensured, months later, that the DEA and FBI discovered he was laundering millions of dollars in service to a notorious drug cartel with tentacles in every major city from NYC to Bogota, regardless of the fact that, within his large resume of deplorable activities, he had never committed _that_ particular crime. Not quite the whistle he anticipated me blowing, but when I set my mind to a task, I knew how to toe the line and how to cross it.

Galvanized by that triumph, I used equally contentious tactics to secure votes during my first years in the political arena of Storybrooke. I feigned naivete when I ran opposite Richard Gold who owned eighty percent of the town's businesses but none of its workers hearts. Spurred on by Gold's continuous attempts to blackmail me - Daniel, only my fiance at the time, was not a legal citizen and had familial ties to notorious East Coast (and foreign) mobsters - it was easy to spark picket line controversies with his underappreciated employees over rumors of him price jacking basic foodstuffs in his grocery store chain and of him refusing to increase wages and benefits - and to supply a paper trail for the accusations that were entirely baseless (but not beyond the scope of something he would do).

I was surprised it took an imbecilic biker to remind me of my former temperament, and thus instill me with a conviction and savage hate I haven't experienced in _years_. I didn't realize just how antsy I had become without that hate until now.

And yet, I also was _not_ surprised the biker affected me so.

Undeniably, there was a single narrative when it came to my closest female friends, lovers and enemies: they were confident, smart and blonde.

On a primal and visceral level, that three trait cocktail was my kryptonite.

And, I'm not alone in harboring that particular susceptibility. There are annotated studies which reveal how human eyes more readily identify light colors, especially yellow hues. It's the reason why school buses and cabs were painted a shade of yellow so bright and so stark it's almost a form of ocular assault.

It's no coincidence, then, that my closest friends during my undergrad days at Yale and my graduate stint at Harvard, Kathryn Midas and Maleficent Van Straten, both fit the bill. That biker bandit continued to weigh on my mind, whether preconditioned or not, and every thought that lingered on her sparked a war of emotions within me.

But I've inherited my mother's biological imperative to pretend everything was as it should be, and if it was not, to expunge any weakness until was.

"Follow me at once," I commanded Ariel, as I rose from my chair and thudded out my office door.

**[SQ mayor SQ] [SQ mayor SQ]**

"Am I missing something? Because I still don't understand where you need me to go when I don't have much time to finish all my other tasks," Ariel complained, dropping her notepad over a weird tchotchke perched near her computer.

"You're missing the _subtext_ , dear. You're not being sent on an errand," I said, fishing an empty toner box from a nearby shelf. "You're being _fired_. Pack your personal effects in this box," I concluded, handing her said box.

Something uncouth happened with her face.

A rough quiver and a sheepish smile locked into apocalyptic battle, and tears were called up from the reserves.

She actually quailed over my decision, as if genuinely shocked it had graced her ears. Her eyes told the entire story: she was falling into a dark abyss that would consist of her obsessively replaying her mistakes over and over again in the forefront of her mind like a social media clip left on an infinite repeat loop.

"But I need this job," she implored, clasping her hands around the box submissively as a few stray tears tunneled down the hills of her cheeks.

Ariel's sniveling was a horrid epitaph to a profoundly upsetting morning.

"And I needed you to do _this_ job, but you've proved unequal to the task," I said, almost in the consoling voice I reserved only for my son.

I knew how it felt to work in an environment with everything stacked against you, constantly struggling to wedge your foot in doors that people quickly shut before your eyes. Still, I was not running a charity. I was running a town.

While Ariel looked as if she'd vomit in any minute, I could only care inasmuch as I derived solace in having had the foresight to remodel my corner of Town Hall with marble and granite floors that were a cinch to clean.

I gathered my lips in a thin line and tamped down any sympathizing emotions. I defaulted to embracing my mother's axioms about life, but it was fitting. Danger lurked down the road of kindness; past kindness shown to Ariel led to a leather-clad ruffian treating the institution of my office as her personal pissing grounds.

"Email Sidney before you leave. He'll have the paperwork to ensure you receive university credit," I said plainly as I headed back to my office only to be stopped by a now defiant voice at my back.

"You're just like they all said," she barked coldly between sniffles like a recently grounded petulant child.

I turned around quickly to address her.

"What, pray tell, have _they all_ said about me?" I goaded hostilely with both my temperature and my pulse raising.

Everyone knew I was a popular topic of gossip - I even had the moniker _Evil Bitch Queen_ tossed at me once in NYC - but on the whole I did not have the exact account of how all and sundry in Storybrooke defined me. It was one thing to know you were being judged and another to know the exact verdict.

Ariel jerked in shock, morphing her ridiculous frown into an equally ridiculous snotty smirk.

"You're so damaged, not even devil would buy your soul," she declared smugly, and that was when the Tylenol stopped being effective and my migraine warped into molten fire scorching through my veins.

In the moment of murderous silence that choked the space between us - her eyes boring into mine as I narrowed my own - it appeared as if she expected me to join her in some pathetic screaming match that would devolve into fisticuffs.

The redhead was truly pitiful, her arms crossed at the chest, affecting someone with more guts than brains. She was scarcely one-fourth the threat that biker had been when simply raking her eyes over my body.

"Word of advice..." I said, leering in response to her reddening cheeks, allowing my anger to steamroll over my eyes. What flowed next from my mouth was admittedly not one of my finer verbal assaults, but dealing with ineffectual lackeys and tattooed dregs of society had grown taxing. I could feel the heated, scratchy irritation leaving my throat before I heard it. "...emotional blackmail is not your strong suit, dear. Perhaps play up what your infantile outburst suggests is a very flexible jaw joint and don't forget to be mindful of the uncomfortable ground when you're own your knees."

"Not everyone sleeps their way to the top, _Madame_ Mayor," she spat, finally finding the backbone inside of herself that she'd need to survive in life because, in that moment - with the mounting pressure in my head darn near exploding into volcanic ash - I was more than determined to make certain she never held a job in Storybrooke that didn't require a hairnet and a high tolerance for grease smells.

"How right you are," I countered, the fire blazing anew on my lips, my smile wider than a spoiled child's at Christmas but deadlier than a rattlesnake bite. "Unlike _you_ , most interns do their jobs instead of lying down asleep on the job."

"Madame Mayor," an all too familiar accented voice interjected.

Sheriff Graham had materialized near my office doorway, and both Ariel and I turned to regard him impassively as he trudged closer to stand awkwardly at her side. His brooding emo act looked ill-fitting, like a small boy walking around in one of his father's overlarge oxford shirts moments before tripping over the sleeves.

Graham had once been a pillar of decisive strength, but lately he clung to the irritating disposition of a timid man who was one step away from drowning his sorrows in liquor and tears.

He proffered me an unattractive perfunctory nod and then eyed us both quizzically.

It was clear he would make a grand show of comforting Ariel.

And do so out of _spite_.

Less than a month ago, seeing him swagger into my office in a clean and crisp uniform made my cheeks burn scarlet, my breath hitch mid-throat, and my fingers ache to maul his toned skin. It sparked an itch inside me that my molten core begged me to scratch.

Now … it's just the itch of an irritating rash.

Seeing his brown hair that was long enough to cover one of his cerulean eyes but swept away from his face with a shiny gel product, I wanted to rip a page from that Swan's book and flip Graham the middle finger.

That was not my style, but the sentiment was all me. When it came to my physical association with the sheriff, it was never about compassion and always about convenience. We were only ever into rough and quick sex in any location that accommodated two bodies except for a bed.

A bed was _intimate_.

I was only ever intimate with Daniel.

"One moment, Sheriff," I said, raising a finger before he could protest. I addressed Ariel in my most calm voice ever. "Clear out your personal effects before I return from the courthouse," I clipped, punctuating my command with a curt dismissive hand wave. No longer any room for amiability. "Do not force me to make our dear Sheriff assist you."

"Ariel? Are you okay?" He asked the shell-shocked young lady with a touch of genuine care in his voice, as she shot me what she must have thought passed as an intimidating look.

Seven seconds longer and her face would be beyond comical.

"Just forget it, Sheriff," Ariel sniffed as she spun on one heel, dropped the toner box, shoulder checked the sheriff, and flounced out of my office hub in a miasma of fiery red curls and static electricity producing fabrics, trailing anger like a dust cloud on her way down the hall.

"Did something happen with Ariel?" he asked earnestly as he rotated his shoulder joint.

"Did something happen with _you_?" I fired back, lips curling around a perfect politician's smile.

"I'm not sure what you're implying," he said, cocking his head to the side in a manner befitting a befuddled canine.

"I'm implying that you owe me an explanation. What were you doing that you couldn't take my call?"

"I thought we agreed to stay upwind of each other," he said flatly as his hands fished out a pocket-sized notebook from his leather jacket.

Shame that cops and bikers had similar taste in fashion. His leather jacket once made him appear rugged and, well, above the law. Now, in light of its sheer naked perfection and the blatant imperfection of the man wearing it, the jacket paled in comparison to the patch-littered vest of a true outlaw.

Because I had spent an inordinate amount of time gazing into Graham's face from all manner of angles, it was easy to see the hurt percolating below the surface of his perfectly chiseled features, especially the lump trapped behind his sable-brown eyes. The expressiveness of those eyes was one reason why a fling that should have lasted one night drove us down a lonely codependent road for two years.

That, and my inability to properly mourn Daniel.

He wanted to have four children but never had the chance to hold his only child.

A drawn-out affair with Graham hadn't even constituted my biggest regret.

Not even my biggest _mistake_.

"How is that again?" My voice was restrained but perceivably contentious.

"I thought the call was of a personal nature," he admitted quietly and most definitely reluctantly.

"At which number did I attempt to reach you?" I demanded bitingly, arching an icy brow.

"The station's line that forwards to my phone," he said, slightly aloof as if the answer was obvious and irrelevant.

"So, your _work_ phone," I corrected, studying the way he worried his bottom lip between blunted teeth. Once bastions of comfort, Graham's lips had become non-kissable, likely due to my rapidly diminishing opinion of him. His lips were not sensually mischievous like the lips of … no one I should ever consider. "Regardless of any misgivings, you should have answered."

"I was out _answering_ a noise disturbance complaint near Widow Lucas' diner. A couple of stray cats had a row and made short work of some old boxes out back," he offered as he trundled closer to Ariel's chair but didn't sit in it.

Now that Graham was mere feet away from me, I was even less enamored with the idea of rehashing old arguments and opening up old wounds with him.

He could never have filled the void left behind by Daniel.

No one could.

It was not possible.

Because my entire life with Daniel had been about sharing one heart and one soul.

It was an all-consuming love that haunted every facet of my life.

No, _defined_ it.

"We've been upwind of each other for over three weeks. Need I remind you it was at my own behest? So, the next time I call you is the exact time you answer. Rest assured, that next call and all subsequent calls will be in the capacity of you assisting me as the sheriff of this town and only in that capacity for the foreseeable future."

"I'm sorry, Madame Mayor. It won't happen again," he grumbled.

"Dreadful apologies appear to be a recurring theme this morning."

"I don't rightly follow."

"That much is evident," I said dryly, more than a little bit annoyed by how his athletic physique and agreeable accent had conspired to hide a grotesquely obtuse nature with the unbearable tendency to brood.

"What was your reason for calling me?" He inquired, tapping his pen on a flipped-open notebook page.

"I summoned you because the town has a serious problem, Sheriff, so do try to grasp the information I'm relaying to you with more vigor than you did our last discussion," I said, almost in the same didactic tone I used when I reminded him to put on a condom before jackhammering me. I didn't mourn either activity.

"I'm confident that will no longer be an issue."

"Good, because a dangerous biker gang has descended upon Storybrooke and is intent upon establishing roots here starting with The Rabbit Hole. I trust that I don't need to explain to an officer of the law the type of trouble such vagabonds will reap upon our town, especially with their hands on property of a dubious commercial benefit."

"I haven't seen or heard word of any biker gang in town. Are you sure they're not weekend warrior vacationers?"

_How could he have missed those bandits thundering down Main Street?_

I pondered the question for a split second before recalling that, yes, this was a man who could make me cum multiple times but never one who could focus on much else for any stretch of time.

"I haven't seen or heard Humpback Whales breach the waters of the Pacific Ocean, nonetheless they've been a presence off the coast of the Hawaiian Islands for centuries."

"What are you advising we do?" He muttered, conceding his fallibility. He was far too malleable. It made me want to laugh. Good thing I gave good politico face. It factored into my ability to ward off a gunshot.

"Following the discovery of this biker menace, I combed over the yearly budget statements and determined that your department can be allocated the necessary funds to hire five new deputies."

"I thought adding just one additional deputy wasn't fiscally possible until the end of next year."

It had been marginally possible before today, but I postponed new police hires until I could locate comparable funding for an overhaul to Storybrooke Elementary. Structural repairs where in order, and the public school desperately needed to attract teachers of high caliber who were being monopolized by our private school, Storybrooke Academy. Before this morning, I considered the public school's monetary issues to be the only blight on my administration. Raising taxes and accepting a dubious donation from Richard Gold did not appeal to the town council's sensibilities or to mine.

But once the biker gang's presence was broadcast, that confederacy of uppity dunces wouldn't express a single objection to having any and all town funds funneled into the Sheriff's Department.

I worked tirelessly for seven years to achieve relative peace in my town despite all the horrors of the modern world because I was all too well acquainted with those horrors. That biker and her gun were in crowded company.

"Apparently miracles do happen. You'll need to assemble those deputies as an anti-gang task force. I've emailed the details of where to find the city ordinances and state protocols for the training and development of your team. It's important that we keep everything up to protocol. We may need to obtain state or federal support in the near future. Do you have any candidates in mind for the task force?"

"There are a few people I could fast track."

"Do it."

"Madame Mayor…"

"... Sheriff?"

"Do you need any manpower at home ... for your and little Henry's protection?"

I should've taken his question in the spirit it was asked: concern for the well-being of others more than hope for a way to jumpstart a dead association between us.

But I also recognized that look in his eyes - it was a less than subtle longing tinged with disappointment.

"If I did, Sheriff, I have a few candidates of my own I can fast track."

"Like that _survivalist_?" He asked, an accusation coloring his tone. His eyes no longer mopey, they sparked with a sudden wild anger.

I bristled at his presumptuous line of questioning. _Had that rage always resided there?_

"I fail to see how my professional association with Mr. Locksley is germane to this discussion much less any of your actual concern," I stated dangerously.

"I mean, I'm not so sure his fringe group is any more a desired presence in town than a biker gang," he floundered, furrowing his brow as he sensed a torrential storm brewing in my dark coffee eyes. "They're extremely vocal and highly visible supporters of bearing arms. Are we really confident they won't become just as dangerous a threat as the bikers?"

"As mayor, I support our state and federal constitutional rights. As a person with a functioning brain, I'm quite capable of separating my professional leanings from my personal biases. I suggest you adopt a similar stance whilst manning the fort. I made you sheriff. And I can take it away just as easily."

"If you want me to head-up this task force, I will."

"Good. Email your list of selected deputies to me no later than eleven am tomorrow morning. I have final sign-off approval."

"Madame Mayor..."

"That will be all, Sheriff."

"We should talk about this, Regina," he insisted with a heated, desperate urgency to his tone, his eyes glassy and doleful yet hard. Unease and unhappiness a permanent fixture on his face.

I pegged him against Ariel's cubicle with cold dark soulless shark eyes.

"There's nothing to discuss," I stated clinically, as a lab technician would to a lay person when discussing the mechanics of a routine lab test no one ever wanted to know about, "Are we clear?" I added, my tone clipped and loaded.

"We are at that," he responded pointedly, fierceness and disappointment warring throughout his face from his eyes to the tight muscles of his jawline, such was his Rorschach mask.

If he thought my dismissive manner didn't properly honor to our history together, he didn't make his grievance known.

Not with words.

He just shuffled away from Ariel's desk without so much as a lingering glance, now armed with concrete knowledge that that history held zero meaning for me.

**

[SQ mayor SQ] [SQ mayor SQ]

**

"By the gods …" I grumbled as I took decisive strides into the larger of my town's two courtrooms, my heels thudding on the polished hardwood floors.

I required the personal pep talk.

There's nothing more patently boring than midday small town bench warrant criminal court.

Day in and day out, it was the same affair. Storybrooke's three judges droned on about their courtroom's draconian protocols, old codgers promised to prevent their half-blind dogs from defecating on their neighbors lawns again, and ambulance-chasing lawyers connived to have their nefarious repeat offender clients' sentences reduced to pittances - all to the shoot-yourself-in-the-face headache inducing metronomic beat of an emotionless stenographer's fingertip tapping.

Granted, after the morning I had, unwavering monotony was a welcomed addition.

For a brief interlude, I didn't clamor to punch anyone in the face.

Eclipsing that desire, because my unmitigated anger had trickled down to a residual putter, finally, was my distaste for being in overheated rooms.

It was unfortunate, then, that courtroom A-1 was the poster child for the negative effects of global warming.

Running borderline clammy fingers through my dark hair - mercifully still buoyant in the oppressively hot and dry courtroom air - before I stalked closer to the seating area, I briefly closed my eyes and sighed at the prospect of spending more than five minutes trapped in a poorly ventilated room that frequently paraded the unwashed criminal masses, some of whom tended to carry stenches more pungent than a burning pile of garbage. The lack of a discernible breeze or fans that blew with more force than a baby's fart further weighed down the chore that was introducing oxygen to the lungs.

This was where dreams deferred went to die.

As dust mites frolicked in the sunlight pouring from high-positioned plain windows, I shrugged off my grey blazer, not unlike a snake molting old skin, and staved off the pedestrian urge to fan myself with it. Luckily, I paired a short sleeved oxford with my pantsuit ensemble and had yet to display the signs of sweating anywhere except my hands.

I also wore a plastic politician's smile like armor as I padded around the room, willing my thoughts to focus on my goal of ruining the Charming Knights. Burying them under my town equated to throwing the law at their heads.

I ignored the inquisitive glances of a few elderly townspeople who undoubtedly found the live performance of People's Court to be infinitely more appealing than staying at home only to be ignored by their small army of cats.

Marco, an elderly carpenter and handyman extraordinaire, was among the population of unfortunate people genuinely excited to attend a court session. Of all the banal encounters with citizens I have had to endure over the years, I honestly found his to be the least infuriating.

"Good afternoon, Madame Mayor," Marco told the side of my face. I tossed him a courtesy nod on my way closer to the front of the courtroom. He wasn't a nuisance but I wasn't in a hospitable mood.

The master craftsman took his time scoping out a seat - which could literally have been anywhere as the were an abundance of empty seats in the peanut gallery; the largest concentration of people, eight to be exact, where criminals corralled off in a holding pen waiting to see the reigning ice queen of the courtroom, Judge Sarah Fisher. Sarah had transformed being disaffected into a perfect art form. No amount of tragic sob story would result in a lenient sentence. There was no room to curry her favor, only space to greatly enrage her. That was a personality trait I cherished in my own repertoire.

It was also what called me to her hellish courtroom during a very late afternoon lunch hour. Finding a pliable mark was infinitely easier in a situation where Sarah had already created no room for the person to maneuver.

"Bail is set at seven thousand. Breakdown is as follows: three thousand for resisting with force, two thousand for destruction of city property, one thousand for DUI, and one thousand for driving with an expired license. Bailiff, please escort the defendant from the stand and back into police custody," the steely Sarah deliberated with a forceful bang of her gavel, startling the criminal whose reservoir of facial sweat could irrigate several industrial farms.

As the bailiff led the dubiously dressed man away from the judge, the handcuffed criminal flashed me an ashen-faced, scrunched snarl that hinted at a great wrenching pain wracking his body - as if he had just been stabbed mercilessly.

I considered myself a percipient judge of other people's exploitable weaknesses, and always had the luxury of unveiling them without the serious impediment of being an actual people person in order to do so.

But a person's greatest worth was the secrets he or she kept hidden from the world.

That man the bailiff coldly ushered out of the judge's presence, with his jittery movements, telegraphed his secret for all to see: he had no chance, in any lifetime, of posting that seven thousand dollar bail.

Soon, I would find comfort in a such a realization dawning upon another ashen face once a certain tattooed blonde was read charges in front of the same glacial judge that she had no chance in hell of beating.

As I started to smile, my phone buzzed with a text from the one employee who has yet to fail me. I thumbed the notification screen.

 **Sidney:** I've procured the requested packages and secure smartphones

The toady yet intelligent Sidney Glass' secret was easy to decipher, six years ago, when his eyes - housed in an angular, thin face - traced the contours of my body, landing reverently on my mouth before he guiltily averted his gaze to resume prattling off the minutes of a meeting I missed due to work-related travel.

In that instant I learned two things.

Sidney was in love with me.

And ...

I would exploit his flattering devotion without harboring any qualms.

But, I'd do so without crushing him. He was a special friend, after all.

Sidney had the privilege of knowing how it felt _and_ what it meant to be rewarded with my trust. He was loyal to an almost suffocating degree, but he was also thoughtful, kind and attentive when it came to Henry and, so far, respectful of my boundaries. Some days his wiry frame carried a genuinely inviting smile that was a sight for sore eyes. But, he would never become more to me than a friend in my employ. No matter how much that fact silently frustrated him and how much he felt I should be over Daniel by now after four years of mourning, Sidney knew he was valuable to me in a way none of my easily discarded lovers - who were always trapped in the shadow of my love for Daniel - had ever been.

Sidney knew how to uncover other people's deepest and darkest secrets like a mirror highlighting the cracks in their faces. His background in computer science factored into that skill but so did his chameleon-like ability to be whatever a person needed - ruse or not.

I answered his text expeditiously lest he became too confident in his skills and too wasteful of my time.

 **Me:** Your check-in is late.

 **Sidney:** You expect ultimate perfection and I need sufficient time to deliver it to you. Shall we F2F in 1 hr?

 **Me:** Send your files to my personal email. Password protected.

 **Sidney:** Do you need the resumes as well?

 **Me:** You have the liberty to hire my assistant and security guard. You know what I require. Send me the biker files only.

 **Sidney:** Already sent

 **Me:** Your intel had better be worthy of my time.

 **Sidney:** I assure you it is neither a hatchet job nor a waste of our time.

 **Me:** Roll forward with anything that will place that Swan in front of Judge Fisher first.

 **Sidney:** For some reason, several records on her were heavily redacted or sealed under court order. Though there's still a lot about the Charming Knights in general.

 **Me:** So, if I'm understanding you correctly, you texted me to tell me you're disappointing me immensely? Do not rest on your past laurels. I've fired one employee today. There is no quota. So get those files on her released to me in their entirety.

As I berated Sidney - blessedly via thumbed words and not face to face - I smirked when my eyes spotted the one blonde I actually wished to encounter today.

I found Kathryn Midas conferring with a client in the far left corner of the courtroom. I waved at her and made the universal hand gesture for _'give me a moment then we can talk.'_

She arched an eyebrow as if to say _'make that sooner rather than later.'_

The thirty-four year old lawyer was a fascinating woman from the moment I set eyes on her at Yale. She had a cool mix of girl-next-door innocent yet sophisticated looks that she usually accentuated with effortless makeup and a flawless dress sense; it made men melt at her smile and worship at her feet.

It was all a wonderful deception.

Almost better than any facade I've ever erected for myself.

Kathryn had the crass mouth of a drunken sailor, the jack-rabbit libido of a drunken frat boy, the raw honesty of a drunken divorcee, and the excitable irritability of a drunken old man. She was paradoxically crude and exceptionally well-bred, and had more advanced degrees and industry awards than she had wall space to display. Her husband Frederick was of intelligent sturdy stock; the man had to be in order to survive five years of marriage with his sanity still intact.

She was a drama queen; what I enjoyed most about the bold blonde was her way of dealing with the various classes of people who populated her lawyer's realm. She threw verbal daggers at her hardened criminal clients as vehemently and as frequently as she did the opposing prosecution team. Her menace was practiced with ease, flair, and panache; it brooked no bull. She made no apologies for who she was or the way she was and she was immensely successful.

We were peas in a pod.

Maleficent rounded out our trio, but only Kathryn was on speaking terms with our beautiful friend...

Kathryn shot me the stink eye in response to my continued brush off - like she was extending a huge favor to me that I was too dumb to comprehend and too stubborn to appreciate. She smoothed down her light blue skirt-suit (she must have received notice about the lack of cooled air) and pointed at a dirty blonde handcuffed behind the holding pen.

I tossed her a firm nod.

Kathryn's client looked exactly like the mark I needed. A twenty-something girl with a nice face and a shapely frame. The trepidation in her eyes, as clear as tropical blue waters, confirmed she was in no position to pass up any opportunity.

I smiled inwardly. I've vaguely known of Ava Tillman by her unfortunate reputation as a thief and finally had a reason to yank her from my mental Rolodex and put her background to expert use.

I needed to work fast; I had been assaulted little more than two hours ago, but my enemy had the advantage. My signature on her permits gave her footing and clout, and by this week's end, her gang would be throwing a hedonistic carnival in my town for gods knew what purpose. My mind immediately considered the event as a front for them to sell drugs or guns or women. Bikers were notorious for all of those deplorable activities.

I already knew they had guns...

Swallowing in a puff of dry air, I turned my attentions to Sydney's incoming text.

 **Sidney:** I'll keep working on obtaining full disclosure files for that lady biker and anything else that can be made to stick for the Charming Knights on the whole.

 **Me:** See that you do. Also make certain Henry is not late to his appointment with Archie. But, before you go, call me. I want to speak with him.

 **Sidney:** As you wish

Sidney's texts morphed into the best reason for owning a set of ears and a smartphone: my son's voice.

"Mommy! Mommy!" Henry exclaimed so exuberantly yet equally winded it sounded as if he has just ran a 10K marathon in record time. I gripped my smartphone tightly, as if doing so were the direct equivalent of hugging him with abandon.

I took solace in the fact that, over the phone, my only reason for living couldn't see my brow furrowing as my mind fretted over every possible danger the bikers presented fast enough to break the sound barrier.

"Hello, my sweet prince. How was your day at the library?"

"I can hold the phone all by myself, Mr. Sidney," he stated politely. Henry was my son through and through from his dark hair to his vaguely sandy skin tone, but he had uncannily inherited his father's ability to deliver blunt phrasing in a genial manner. Sometimes it hurt my heart to hear Henry speak; he displayed Daniel's intonation too. "I learned a new joke today!"

"Can you tell it to mommy or is it a secret joke?" I asked, genuinely excited.

Henry was budding into the greatest little storyteller who ever existed but his current favorite pastime was telling the corniest jokes in the world. I must have heard half a million so far; I'd never tire of his comedy routines. His energy and innocence were the anchors to my sanity. I've never known the joy he feels every day as a child with a mother who adored his company the way I do his - I was only ever a vessel for my mother to fill with her reprehensible ideals and to parade around her colleagues as validation of her philosophies - but I knew all too well of the fears Henry experienced some nights as he tossed and turned and cried in his sleep. I was always there to comfort my son as my father Henry Sr had comforted me before he succumbed to a heart attack when I was sixteen.

But I vowed never to burden Henry with the scars of my past.

We had fresh scars to contend with...

Even before we commenced Henry's sessions with Dr. Hopper, I figured it was a good idea to introduce my son to positive ways to interpret the world around him. He had the active imagination common to his age group but also the awful memories of someone who almost had his life horrifically ripped from him. Henry and I were survivors; books, especially children's jokes and fairy tales, were his way of coping with all we've survived.

Of making what we survived more livable even when it could never be less present.

"It's a really funny joke but … but you haveta like animals, mommy... okay?" He said, plotting to throw me off the path of unraveling his punch line. Even when I knew exactly where his jokes were headed, I always allowed him to have all the glory and pleasure associated with telling them to me.

"I love animals and I love laughing, sweetie. So, let's see if I can tackle this funny new joke."

"What do you call a cow with a little baby cow?" He asked, giggling uncontrollably into the phone.

"Oh, that's a tough one," I teased exaggeratedly.

"Just guess mommy!" My little sweetheart insisted with mock indignation.

Henry functioned in extremes like me, hot and cold and, also like me, he felt everything deeply. So his laughs - no matter how they came, whether plentiful or far between, real or feigned for my benefit - warmed my soul. Brought me balance. Gave me the will to press against life until I left it ragged and winded.

"A milk dispenser?"

"No... a _moomie_!" He shouted, laughing with such fervor it became contagious. Both Sidney and I shared in his fun. Leave it to the whimsy and innocence of a child to ground you in life. Hearing his voice invigorated my passion to complete my task by any means necessary yet with careful consideration.

I could not fail Henry again.

He's my entire world.

"That's a good one, sweetie."

"I know, mommy, _sheesh_ ," he said in a voice much too big for his body. I couldn't help but smile at the curious behavior - perhaps a precursor to his far off teen years - because it merited my adoration. "Sidney brought me three used books for home!"

"That was nice of Mr. Glass. Can you be a wonderful little gentleman for Dr. Hopper, too?"

"Do I have to?" His super saccharine plea melted my heart.

"I'm afraid so."

A commotion in the holding pen momentarily distracted my attention from my son. The bailiff began clearing criminals awaiting their appearance in front of Sarah from the pen. All except for Ava and a middle-aged man slumped on the floor who appeared as drunk as he was slovenly.

"Can we have apple pie for dessert?" Henry chirruped. He was my flesh and blood but picked up his godmother Kathryn's manipulative negotiation skills through magical osmosis.

"Only if you eat all of your yummy veggies at dinner."

He also had a way of cutting right to the point that was all his own. "Veggies are not yummy."

"I know, sweetie, but the broccoli will have three different types of low fat cheese," I whispered, conspiratorially, and instantly knew that I had won him over. His giggles returned.

They were the loveliest musical notes in the world.

"Awesome!" It was. _He_ was.

"Can you hand the phone back to Mr. Sidney?"

"Okie-dokie artichokie!" He chirped, knowing exactly how I'd end our conversation because it was how we ended all of our phone conversations.

It was our routine and no one would ever be able to breach its sanctity.

"Bye-bye french-fry." I could not say it slow enough, for the life of me, to prolong one comforting moment.

Sidney's voice floated over the phone, bursting my all too brief bubble of joy."Yes, Madame Mayor?"

And just like that, my body became a live conduit for the burning electricity of outrage and hatred. It wasn't Sidney's fault or even directed at him, but my tone of speech through clamped teeth suggested otherwise.

"Watch my son at _all_ times."

"I am his shadow, Regina."

A shadow with a licensed gun, I reminded myself. Sidney never left his loft without his 'insurance policy.' Storybrooke was arguably the safest city in America, and possibly the world at large, but it had a past just like any other city that, like me, Sidney was all too aware of. This current predicament with the bikers just highlighted that fact for us all over again.

I tucked my phone away as I approached Kathryn and the degenerate young woman in handcuffs standing behind the copper wire of the holding pen. Kathryn did not exaggerate her client's appeal. Ava looked at her with wide-eyed fear and regret.

The young thief was sure to be a soft target.

"Ava," Kathryn said, standing in front of the holding pen stiffly as if she suddenly realized a traffic light turned red and pedestrian crossing was ill-advised. "Here's how this one will go. Do not enter a plea. In fact, do not open your mouth at all except to tell Fisher that you understand the charges against you. If you deviate from that game plan, so help the gods, I'll shove my bare right foot so far up your skinny ass, you'll be speaking with a mouth full of manicured toes and know what the color Pretty In Pink tastes like. If you do what I've said to the letter, then I'll make sure Fisher sets a bail amount your family can post without selling their kidneys. Nod if you understood what I just said to you."

Ava nodded and then eyed me with all the shock of a deer caught in the proverbial headlights. "Mrs. Mills?"

"Indeed," I offered, repressing the smirk inspired by Kathryn's prep talk to Ava.

"Oh, by the gods, don't be such a stalker, Reggie," Kathryn jested. She's known since our undergrad days that I've immensely disliked the nickname she gifted me. That knowledge didn't prevent her from using the odious thing every chance she had.

I scowled out of habit. "This heat is unbearable and repugnant."

"I'm a broken water fountain myself. I can only imagine you're hiding an oasis under your pantsuit," she assented and then immediately switched gears with a healthy splattering of fury. "But you were tweaking my tits on the phone, right? Are you seriously considering not pressing charges? Because if that's your final decision, I might slip into a diabetic _fucking_ coma."

I knew what the narrow eyes Kathryn tossed me meant, didn't care for them, and wouldn't succumb to them. I almost wished we could travel back in time to when she regarded me with casual indifference because she was too busy falling in love with Frederick and subsequently making excuses to miss our weekly lunches because she was too busy getting well and truly laid. "I'm not so much as making a statement, Kath. We do this _my_ way," I replied.

She had no tolerance for my explanation.

And her client Ava looked at the two of us with more confusion than should be humanly possible.

"The more evidence and charges we have on this gang, the better chance we have at burying them six feet under your town. I'm paraphrasing you, of course, but you should consider it, Reggie."

"I'll consider a formal statement with Graham down the line, but no charges. Perhaps a tit for tat though."

"If you chop off that biker's head and mount it on your office's wall, that's categorically illegal."

"Yet clinically ideal," I said, the corners of my lips curling in a snarl.

There were a few things I'd love the chance to do with that blonde biker's head … mounting it …

Kathryn noticed my uncharacteristic moment of being lost to my thoughts. "As your lawyer and not your best friend, I'm advising you to take both of the legal options I expressed to you and to do so _today_."

I motioned for Kathryn to move with me away from the holding pen. Ava subtly inched forward in an effort to continue eavesdropping.

"I don't want any blowback to hit my front porch. I have your godson to consider. We'll hit them on the things that have nothing to do with me personally," I stated with conviction. I leaned in to whisper the rest of my concern for her ears only. "She had no qualms about pointing that gun at my chest, Kath. There's no telling what she'll do to _really_ hurt me."

There was no accounting for what lunatics would do to achieve their desired outcome.

I learned that lesson the hard way.

The scar above my lip was not a beauty mark.

No matter how justified I was or vindicated I felt, I provoked that blonde biker with my threat to bury her Charming Knights deep under fertile Storybrooke soil. There would be blowback of some sort.

When the biker first clopped into my office, I didn't think much of her. But, she was right. I didn't _know_ her. I could only extrapolate the risks involved. Armed with more intel and the law, I would get to know her well enough, soon enough.

"Harassment with criminal intent, illegally concealed weapon, reckless storage of a weapon… we could hit her with those in a heartbeat."

Apparently our conversation wasn't as muted as I thought. Either that or Ava was conditioned to pick up on crimes being read out loud in her vicinity out of survival instinct.

"Hey, what are y'all talking about? I didn't do any of that-"

"Ava, when we're talking to you or about you, you'll fucking know. So take a corner until one of us flags you down," Kathryn stated, and I couldn't love her more for her take charge attitude. Crass or not.

As Ava stalked to the back corner of the holding pen, I pressed a finger to my left eyebrow. "You of all people know those type of criminals hit you in the gut and the heart, Kath. I have Sidney scrounging up whatever he can through his channels. Is it possible for you to just do the job I've asked?"

"Really, Reggie? I can feel my hymen growing back with you questioning my capabilities," she deadpanned.

"If we find nothing on paper to work with, which I highly doubt, then we'll do things _your_ way. But, if we decide to go down that road, I'll need time to send Henry to Canada to stay with Zelena. But, I don't want to disrupt his life more than it already has been, Kath. My formal report is _last_ resort. Our current resort is your pickpocket client."

"She's done much more than just leave unsuspecting people's pockets filled with lint."

"She's not a natural brunette, but she'll do."

"Why must she be a brunette _specifically_?"

"A hunch."

Otherwise known as _'I saw an animalistic burning desire in that crazed biker's visual appraisal of me.'_ I dressed for success in more ways than one, and certainly knew I was desirable, but her licentious surveying gaze was much too great a response. There were times when it appeared that I was all she could see and everything she would fight for just to own a taste of me. She was at war with herself as much as she was with me.

No matter how much I denied it, my mother was right about more than one thing.

_"When you know a person's weakness, Regina, you can control them. You will have the power."_

"Are we running with a tragically misunderstood Ava as a youth outreach coach angle?" Kathryn asked, lulling me out of my musings on my mother's twisted and self-serving philosophies.

"Decidedly so, dear."

"There's a silver lining to this cloud of shit after all. I'll make her commit to the actual hours in addition to your little recon mission."

"Just make the deal happen with the prosecution and Judge frosty."

"Yes, mother. I'll go play nice with the other kids," Kathryn mocked as she sashayed her way to the judge's bench. Kathryn was not fooling me; she lived for procuring impossible plea bargains for her clients. She was the most winningest lawyer in Maine and scoured Storybrooke for clients due to our high concentration of individuals who had deep pockets and a deep lack of being versed in all things law.

I approached the holding pen and rapped my knuckles lightly against the wire. "Ava."

The young woman rolled her eyes, but had the good sense not to keep me waiting. "Yep?"

Hopefully her listening prowess transcended that of her sparse vocabulary.

It did not escape my notice that Ava shared the same street patios as that raving blonde lunatic who accosted me.

I couldn't shake the residual hum of that biker's voice from my head.

**_Your move bitch..._ **

The horror of it had imprinted on my synapses.

Now it was the soundtrack to my revenge and Ava was one of the instruments.

The young thief allowed curiosity to dull her irritation. She shuffled closer to me with a blank slate face.

My voice always hooked them.

The blondes.

And so I adopted a low gravelly drawl that promised intrigue but also brooked no room for defiance.

"A word in the corner of the pen."

**[SQ mayor SQ] [SQ mayor SQ]**

"That's all?" Ava announced, feigning the haughty confidence of someone with a winning poker hand who, unbeknownst to her, had absolutely no matching poker face to pair with it. "You ain't exactly overwhelming me with incentive."

"Money is _never_ the only thing to consider. You should understand all the risks involved. You've been a confidential informant for Mrs. Midas in the past, but what I require is more nuanced with vast implications involved."

"The only thing involved is my neck," she groused, leaning her forehead against the holding pen's wall of wire. The pressure of flesh against metal tattooed itchy looking grooves into her skin.

"That's where you're wrong and precisely why you should listen closely. If you agree to the job, under no circumstances do you actually know me outside of the prefabricated cover of your connection to the town's youth project initiative. That fact will not change once you've settled in with the Charming Knights, provided you can accomplish anything substantial beyond mere introductions."

"You wouldn't be coming at me all Mission Impossible style if you didn't already know I can do the shit you need. Loose lips will get my wig twisted, so I got it," she declared, threading her fingers into the tiny spaces of the wire wall, turning them into whitening rods of hardened flesh.

"Good to see there are functional brain cells careening around the dark corners of your mind. Still, for the sake of crystal clear clarity, I'll spell things out. If anyone suspects you, then it's _you_ and only _you_ anyone suspects. If anything about our arrangement or my personal life is even remotely hinted at during your associations with the Charming Knights, then I will bury you under a backlog of crimes even Mrs. Midas couldn't defend you against. That is, if you even walk out of those biker's clutches _alive_. Lest you feel a martyrdom death is an acceptable trade-off for any pain you feel myself, Mrs. Midas, or society at large has caused you, do consider my knowledge of your twin brother."

" _What_ twin brother?" She said with a barely there hiccup in her voice. She was brimming with feints, which was always a tragic characteristic when not properly masked.

"Do not insult either of us by pretending you do not have a blood connection to a Nick Hansel Tillman."

"I don't see how he has shit to do with this," she said, immediately changing her tune and balling her fists at her side.

"I'm about to overwhelm you with incentive, dear. _Everything_ depends on how you want to involve him. Seems your twin brother has recently checked into a methadone rehabilitation center in our state's great capital. Perhaps that center is owned and operated by a highly impressionable person who adores spending money and knows your brother is on his last strike. Perhaps your brother does not wish to spend his impending sobriety sharing an eight by eight foot iron bar-enclosed room with a burly man who'll take his life sentence rage out on your brother's face and other body parts."

"Geez, I fucking get it," she relented with darkness consuming her eyes. "Leave my brother outta this shit."

I shrugged as if unfazed by her display of might because it was wholly unimpressive. However, regrettably, I was affected by the brief sadness reflected in her eyes. I hadn't envisaged dragging _relatively_ innocent people into a fray as potentially dangerous as this one, but fighting fire with fire required the proper accelerant.

I was confident Ava's Achilles Heel was her brother. Her past illegal endeavors funded his various stints in rehab and his rent elsewhere when he was between facilities.

"For _everyone's_ sake, make that the actionable truth. And given the sensitive nature of this task, do understand that I am not _pimping you out_ to that biker or her gang. Whatever you do to extract information is entirely of your own accord. That means your own free will."

"I'm not a fucking idiot," she snapped, picking dirt from underneath her nails with her teeth. In that moment, by all considerations, and to borrow her own words, she looked exactly like _'a fucking idiot.'_

"Current location and predicament suggest otherwise, but I'll chalk that up to a youthful exuberance for obtaining the finer things in life without the inclination or ability to actually work for them."

Her teeth clenched in fit of anger. "Do you ever just say what the _fuck_ it is you mean?"

" _Always_."

She pushed her head off the wire and tutted.

"What if they…" she started with worry etched across her face. She took a deep breath before continuing. "...look, I'm not dumb enough to rat you or yours out and I know a shit-ton of ways to get info from suckers without fucking them … but, say I've kept my mouth on lock - and I _will_ \- but say I feel my life's in danger. Can I walk away from that shit and not catch slack or worse from you?"

"You can walk away from everything _right now_. It'll consist of you walking away handcuffed toward a jail cell, but it's a viable option should you find yourself not up to the task. However, if you do choose to go undercover, how you survive while on the inside and how you extract yourself from them is your own affair. My only obligation to you was spelling out the risks and expectations. Police custody or biker parties, it's your prerogative."

She threaded her fingers through the wire again and gripped it tightly. A mouse with its feet caught in a mousetrap trap will always seek an out until its last twitchy breath. "You don't give a shit about _anybody_."

"I do not care _specifically_ about you, but, contrary to popular belief, I do have a conscious. That's why I'm giving you a choice. I can hardly be blamed for little more than pointing out that your choices are both limited and unfavorable because of the decisions you've made in life. Mrs. Midas will take things from here should you choose the job."

"Yeah… if you were me... what would you do?" She asked with an angry sadness woven into her voice.

Hooked by lack of good choices.

I didn't have the heart to rub salt in her wounds.

Call it being drained from fighting the hot air in the room.

I did not deem it sincere kindness.

"It's both our good fortunes that I don't have to make that choice for you," I said curtly, moving away from the holding pen with my back to her.

It didn't escape my attention that the real difference between Ava and myself was my vantage point of seeing all of the chess pieces in play and exactly _how_ they were being played.

Her a pawn.

Me a queen.

But neither of us controlled all of our own moves.

"You didn't tie me to the stake ..." she called after me, her voice quaking with renewed rage yet something approaching regret "...but you did light the flames. The least you could do is humor me."

And there it was when I couldn't afford to experience it… _sympathy_ … because I was someone's mother and Ava's plea for help was like that of a small child's.

I sighed without breaking my stride and shot my response to her awaiting eyes over my back, almost chastising myself for the understanding I was extending to her. "I'd do what you've likely always done when you embraced the darker aspects of yourself in the name of love. Think about who you love the most. Think your _brother_."

It was advice I extracted from my own heart.

After all, despite how they blossomed into sheer underhandedness, when I made my war plans, all I thought about was my sweet little prince.

**

[SQ mayor SQ] [SQ mayor SQ]

**

Most people viewed their cars as a means to move quickly from point A to point B.

My black Mercedes roadster, with its custom tinted windows, was not merely transportation.

It was a personal _sanctuary_.

It inoculated me against quotidian intrusions into my personal space that constantly threatened to erode my piece of mind; I yearned for the centering strength that sitting in an inviolable space while I corralled my thoughts and emotions - however much they devolved into the mundane or abstruse - that my roadster always afforded me.

My day started in scandalous mayhem, became mired in an atmosphere of exceptional stultification, and disintegrated into an unabashed attempt at hibernating inside a sleek luxury vehicle like an eccentric recluse.

Parked outside Town Hall, idling in a recently resurfaced lot that was all but deserted save for a royal blue Dodge Caravan belonging to the early evening cleaning crew, protected from the somnolent outdoor heat by my car's cooled interior, I watched as one of the cleaning workers walked past my car yelling loudly into his phone in Russian.

I closed my eyes, shut out the world, and held my breath until my lungs burned holes in my chest.

There was one final task dire circumstances compelled me to complete before collecting Henry from his therapy session.

It was the last thing on earth I wanted to do.

_Eat crow._

I gave myself a measured look in my rearview mirror, then retrieved my phone from my argilla Prada Saffiano tote, stowed the bag on my passenger seat, and dialed a number I hadn't called in years.

I banked on the number still connecting to his direct line.

It rang and rang ... and then rang again. A continued theme of my day.

But all concerns of those seven digits being an antiquated contact number were laid to rest when an ominously thorny but preternaturally confident voice made its presence known.

"I doubt you're calling to wish me a happy summer's eve," Richard Gold hummed, and it was more a chastisement of my numerous foibles, real or imagined, that he proudly exulted in cutting displays of his incendiary opinion than a customary greeting between old acquaintances. That I could fully reciprocate made me the foremost person to keep both the closest and the furthest away from his dealings. "But I'll take this cessation of your radio silence to mean the water under the bridge you're attempting to build between us is, in fact, the putrid runoff from an industrial leak you've wrought upon a town that you struggle daily to govern."

The impish grin that perpetually adorned his dour face whenever we acknowledged each other in passing (with venomous eyebrow arches on my part and nothing else) was practically visible through the cellphone signal.

The fact that Gold opened with a thinly veiled insult telegraphed that he was under no illusions about why I called him after so many years and so far away from campaign season.

I needed something only he could supply, and the verbal exchange from here on out would be nothing less than a war of attrition to obtain or deny it.

There was seldom anything that escaped Gold's attentions. While he couldn't possibly have known about my earlier encounter with that blonde thug, if I knew bikers were in Storybrooke then Gold knew bikers were in Storybrooke.

And - because he orchestrated moves within circles I did not - he undoubtedly knew they were here _before_ I did.

There was only one reason why I hadn't noticed bikers in my town before this morning: They weren't staying _in_ my town.

That left the astronomically good probability they were staying on the outskirts of Storybrooke, in Gold country.

I dived right into the point. "I need a favor, Gold," I huffed, spitting his name out like profanity as I drummed my fingers along the edge of my steering wheel. "And you're going to give it to me."

"Perhaps you've suffered from one too many debilitating migraines, Regina," he started, delivering my name snidely before breaking abruptly into an eerily jovial chuckle. Animosity will always linger between us, but over the years it has transformed into an unspoken mutual respect for our unparalleled skill-sets that we sharpen against each other's faces like blades to whetstones. "... so I'll be a gentleman and remind you that I do not grant anything in the way of favors. Favors are unicorns. Pure myth," he concluded.

"I think you'll make an exception," I teased in a slow drawl. "After all, outlaw bikers loitering around Storybrooke is not good for business. You, my dear _imp_ , are only content when business is booming."

"That, dearie, depends entirely on _what_ business I've made _my_ business. But outlaw bikers you say? Sounds intriguing. How ever could one have missed spotting them in our illustrious town?"

I white-knuckled gripped my steering wheel at the insult. "You don't appear to be a man who has everything he wants except a loud motorcycle. But you are the man who has a cabin in the woods he's been most keen on unloading in tiny increments. I vaguely remember you attempting to lease it to my sister's husband. Something about the lush forest trees providing the perfect curtains against prying eyes."

"My, my, Madame Mayor. You do not strike me as one who engages in the trivialities of camping. At least not on your own," he suggested with a heady accusation tinting his voice.

I stomached his slights for the sake of piercing through to the heart of the matter.

Besides, Gold's interest was hooked the moment he answered my call. Voicemail was invented for the disinterested.

"Good thing I happen to be equipped with the ratifying vote you require on a certain city ordinance amendment. If my memory serves me correctly, no one on the town council has been clamoring to pass your cute little suggestion. Now, would you look at that," I said, with mock surprise coloring my voice. "The next town meeting is first thing tomorrow morning. I do so love using my pens for more than just decorating my desk."

I had no doubt in my mind whether or not he would acquiesce.

The only unknown was how hard he'd press for an advantage.

"Color me the least bit curious," he replied evenly and surprisingly quick. The man did have a way with pouncing when the circumstances were perfect.

"Bikers are leasing your cabin, are they not?"

"If what you're offering is more than a beautifully constructed Trojan Horse, then perhaps they _were_ leasing my property," he stated before outright laughing. "Was it too optimistic of me to think they'd play nice with the local authorities?"

Gold grated on my nerves, but I maintained focus and simply sighed. The only thing that spoke to his greedy nature more than the currency of secrets or actual money was the assurance of real political power.

I strapped down my urge to drive to his pawnshop and kick him in his yellowing teeth.

Sneering, I told him, "You may enjoy lying down in beds with flea ridden cohorts but the rest of us do not. How fast can you tinker your way out of that contemptible lease?"

"The moment your ink dries on my bill, dearie."

"Gold, if any of this comes to light-"

"Save the red level threat warnings for your blissfully unaware plebs. If mutually assured destruction has kept nuclear war at bay since the first splitting of the atom, I can stomach the precautions and caveats."

"You don't strike me as one without an ear for the specifics."

"A secure phone line grants me some leeway. Are we agreed on the terms?"

"As much as we can be," I assented, turning my keys in the ignition and sparking my car to life.

"Then prepare to turn myth into reality, dearie."

As I knew he would do for the right price.

He owned a pawnbroker shop for a reason.

Ariel, impeded by the myopic lens from which she viewed life - one fashioned from of the naivete and inexperience of being young - had no idea just how wrong she and her 'they' were about me.

Yes, I _was_ damaged.

Perhaps even _irreparably_ so.

But that damage honed me into a woman who did not flinch when a loaded gun was cocked in her face.

It was not a _weakness_.

I needn't worry about the devil rejecting my damaged soul because the _real_ devil was always other _people_.

And other people were beneath me. 

"When have I ever led you to believe I was not prepared?" I stated plainly. 

There was no such thing as meaningless silence when it came to Gold, so the protracted moment that passed without his response was rife for interpretation. If there were two people on earth who despised each other more yet knew each other better than Gold and I did one another, neither one of us has met that pair. 

They were the true unicorns. 

The myths. 

And to get to that point between us, the both of us had done terrible things. 

And had terrible things done to _us_. 

"I'd hate to discover what those poor little bikers did to earn your admiration thus so," he said, the mirth in his voice laced with a sharp edge. No difficulty reading between the lines there. Soon, he would be the only person besides Kathryn who knew exactly how far that Swan woman had crossed the line with me. I'd never tell him myself, but he'd uncover the truth. He always did. Exactly how he used that detail was the thing. I didn't fear a twitchy armed biker, but I had sense enough to be wary of a seemingly calm man cut from the same black cloth as myself. 

What he said next, with the signature sing-songy cadence of his full lilt, was pure magic to my ears. 

"In two days time, Madame Mayor, your newest constituents shall be officially homeless."

The words resonated within my pulse; I felt impossibly light as I revved my roadster's engine. 

But I also felt an all-too-familiar heaviness as the blonde's gruff voice ignited against my temples, combusting into ashes and then rising from the ether of my mind like a gangling phoenix. 

_**_Your move bitch…_ ** _

The febrile remnants of her declaration gave me no peace and irritated me to no end. 

But, like a war drum, the vibrations from my car tearing down hot pavement drowned out her crude anthem. 

The sensory input of her voice, her smell, and her glares faded away as I headed toward my son. 

Your move dear... 

Right the hell out of _my_ town. 

****

**_To Be Continued ..._**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> **Please let me know your thoughts, suggestions, feelings, rants about this chapter!**  
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> **Wanna hear everything you wonderful folks have to say, so don't be shy. : )**  
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> Up Next: Emma's POV - The proverbial shit hits the fan and blows right in Emma's face. And yet, she still wants to see Regina's round ass disrobed before her eyes so she can brass-knuckle slap it and... hey, her words, not mine!


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